Dark Side of the Moon
by Archivesgrrl and Cobweb
Summary: AU Season 6 fic. B/S, X/A, W/T.
1. U-Turn

Resurrection

Dark Side of the Moon by Archivesgrrl and Cobweb

Episode 1: U-Turn

RATING: Overall PG-13. Some parts will have an NC-17 version posted to fanfiction.net and Of Muses and Minions. All episodes posted to BAPS will be PG-13.

SPOILERS: Through "The Gift." 

SUMMARY: This is an AU Season 6 fic. Each chapter is a self-contained "episode," with the exception of the first two, which are linked (a two-parter). We plan 22 "episodes."

ARCHIVE: BAPS ([http://www.bloodyawfulpoet.com][1]) and Of Muses and Minions ([][2]http://people.ne.mediaone.net/shavorclan/). Others with permission.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please! Send it to archivesgrrlandcobweb@yahoo.com 

DISCLAIMERS: All characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. 

THANKS: Larissa, for the awesome beta reading!

NOTE: Part of Episode 1 has already appeared on fanfiction.net as "Not a Hero."

The alarm went off, a shrill intrusion into the blissful unawareness that was sleep.

Dawn Summers opened her eyes, threw out her arm, and hit the button on the alarm. She sighed deeply and looked at the clock. Just a few minutes till sunrise. She got up and slipped on her robe, then padded toward the door. As she made her way quietly down the dark hall, she paused by her mother's room. No noise. Good. Her alarm hadn't awakened Xander and Anya. 

She tiptoed her way down the stairs and headed for the back door. He was there on the steps, head in his hands, a dozen or so cigarette butts in a pile next to him. It was still dark, but she could see the faint glow of sun on the horizon.

"Spike, time to come in."

He sighed, looked up at her. This was their morning ritual. No matter what he found to do during the long nights–killing demons, sitting in front of the telly, drinking at the Bronze and watching vapid teens dance and snog and whine about their worthless lives–sunrise always found him on the back porch of Buffy's–Dawn's–house, wishing he could just sit there until the sun rose and turned him into ashes. And he'd do it, let it happen right in the very spot where he realized how much he loved her, that wanting to kill her and wanting to shag her paled against the desire to ease her pain and give her happiness. 

If it weren't for Dawn, he'd do it.

"C'mon, Spike. Quick, before I have to vacuum you up."

She wasn't going to leave him alone, he knew, so he unwound his limbs, stiff from a longer-than-usual night on the porch, and followed her to the back door, where she stood impatiently, holding the door open for him. 

"What's for breakfast this morning, sweet bit?" he asked as they entered the kitchen.

"Blueberry pancakes–your favorite." She opened the refrigerator and began taking out milk and eggs and blueberries and a pitcher of blood, which she placed on the counter. 

He smiled to himself. It was just like her to think of him having a favorite food. Even with the evidence of his vampire-ness in front of her in the form of the pig's blood, she still focussed on his human qualities, like his interest in human food. As he nuked the pig's blood to a temperature that wouldn't make him gag, she bustled about the kitchen, whipping up pancake batter as if she were Martha Stewart reincarnated, and not a human wrapper around the mystical green glowy energy known as the Key. 

She always made pancakes from scratch, she claimed, because they tasted better that way, but it was really because it took longer than making them from a mix, and she felt Spike needed a lengthy transition from the dark nights of despair and grief back into the world of the living, or at least the living undead. While she cooked the pancakes, she chattered about school, about Willow and Tara's new off-campus apartment, which she was helping redecorate, and about some TV show she'd watched last night. She did this every morning, even on weekends when she didn't have to get up. She knew he needed the routine, needed a reason to come inside in the morning. 

The others needed it too.

Spike had polished off a plate of pancakes when Xander walked into the kitchen, freshly showered, hair wet and slicked back.

"Mornin' Dawnster. Mornin', You." He still hadn't gotten used to living with a vampire. Yeah, he'd set up the basement with a bed and a cable TV connection so Spike could watch his soaps in peace without annoying the rest of the household, but he still didn't like it. Dawn had insisted that Spike move in where she could keep an eye on him, and he found it impossible to say no to her, not now. 

"Xander, you're up early. Did I wake you?" Dawn said anxiously. 

"No, no. You can't wake someone who wasn't even sleeping to begin with." He sat down at the table, and she put a plate of pancakes in front of him. 

"Awww," drawled Spike. "Big day in wood shop? They actually going to let you play with the grown-up tools?" This was also part of their morning routine–Spike and Xander, trading insults. 

"Actually, Bleach Boy, I'm going in early to talk to the foreman about a raise. All the extra hours I've put in over the past few months, plus now I have a family–and a bloodsucking leech--to support. I think I qualify as worthy."

"Don't suck blood now. I sip it, real gentleman-like," Spike said, lifting his mug to his lips. 

Xander opened his mouth to say something, then checked himself. "Dawn, I almost forgot. Could you do me a favor?" he asked. "Anya needs some help at the Magic Box this afternoon. She's expecting some big shipment of crystal balls or magic toads or something, and she needs someone she trusts to handle the money while she checks them in."

  
Dawn looked over her shoulder. "No problem. I'll do it," she said. 

"Yes problem," Spike growled. "Let Rupert do it. It's his bloody shop."

"Spike," said Dawn. "You know Mr. Giles is still working on the report for the Council of Watchers about" her voice caught a moment, "Buffy's death."

"The wanker's had three months to write the soddin' thing. He's not done yet?"

"Guess tearing out your heart every day and contemplating it instead of moving on is a particularly British thing, for both the living and the undead." Xander snapped. He didn't much like Giles' increasing reclusiveness since Buffy's death, but he didn't have any idea what to do about it. 

Suddenly, there was a clatter, a crash, and a curse. 

"Damn it!" Dawn had dropped a plate of pancakes on the floor and was staring at it, tears in her eyes. Spike jumped up and knelt at her feet, picking up the pancakes and pieces of broken plate.

"It's alright, Nibblet. No major damage."

Dawn sniffled, shaking slightly. Spike touched her hair gently. "It's okay." 

"No. It's not okay." She turned and fled, leaving a perplexed Spike and Xander staring after her. 

Xander shrugged helplessly. "Not your fault–this time. She's under a lot of stress."

A frown furrowed Spike's brow as he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. Xander shot him the evil eye, and Spike put the cigarette back.

"Xander!" An annoyed blonde wearing a tattered plaid robe and seemingly not much else entered the kitchen. "Did you forget that we were supposed to have sex this morning before you left?"

With a roll of his eyes, Spike took this opportunity to fade into the background and slip down to the basement. Xander looked momentarily relieved.

"Ahn," said Xander. "I can't today. You know I have this big meeting with the foreman."

"That's what you said yesterday!"

"No, yesterday I had to be in early to meet with the site crew to go over the new plans."

"It's the same thing! It's work. You don't have any time for sex any more! And when we do have sex, you always want us to be quiet and not have any fun."

"Well, we're sharing a house now with other people, particularly little pitchers and impotent vampires who have big ears."  
  
"I heard that!" came the muffled cry from the basement. 

"See?" Xander raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"It's been three days, Xander," Anya was persistent.

"We talked about this before, Anya," Xander said patiently. "Just because we don't have sex every day doesn't mean we don't care about each other."

"Oh, I know that," Anya replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. "But Xander, I need to have sex. I need it now. Please take off your clothes and have sex with me now." Her attempt at a seductive gaze was undermined by the obvious desperation in her eyes.

Xander was tempted, but he was the man of the house now. He had responsibilities.

"No, honey."

"Well, fine then! I'll just take this " her eyes swept across the kitchen, landing on the counter, "this banana. It will probably give me a lot more orgasms than you do!"

She flounced out of the kitchen and up the stairs. 

Xander could swear he heard muffled sniggering, but since he didn't have time to beat the crap out of a deadbeat vampire, he simply took his car keys off the hook near the back door and let himself out.

"So, I was talking to Margaret at the student union this morning," Tara ventured as she and Willow walked down Main Street toward the Magic Box. "She told me there's a waiting list for that computer science seminar you wanted to take, you know, with Professor Rogin."

"Oh, I'll have no problem getting into that class," Willow said. "Rogin owes me one. I showed him a place on the Internet where he could watch his favorite TV show two days before it aired, and now he is my slave."  


"O-okay," Tara wasn't done, "but don't you think a lot of other classes might be full by now? Shouldn't you go register before it's too late? Classes start next week. The registrar's office is open until 6 today. Why don't you come with me to the U and sign up?"

"Iwill," Willow said. "It's just I used to sign up for classes with Buffy, and now." Willow's brow crinkled with unhappiness.

  
Tara made a sympathetic noise. "I know, honey. But don't you think Buffy would want you to go back to school?"

"I guess," Willow said. "But she also knew how important it was to fight evil, and since she's gone and Faith is in prison, there's no one except me and Spike who can do it."

They'd reached the door to the Magic Box.

"But Willow," Tara put her hand on Willow's arm. "You know how much it takes out of you. And all you do any more is read spells and go out and patrol. If I didn't know any better, I'd think you and Spike were."

"As if! He's not my type," Willow grinned mischievously. 

"Actually, I was thinking it was more unlikely that Spike could ever look at another woman." Tara said as she pushed in the door.

"Hi guys!" Dawn was standing behind the cash register. Behind her, they could hear muttering, and occasionally pieces of paper flew into the air.

"Problem with the shipment," Dawn whispered. Willow and Tara nodded in understanding.

"Dawn, can you read?" Anya popped her head up. "Oh good. Willow can read. Willow, read this for me. Can you tell me how many Oroborus Chalice and Ritual Plate Sets are on that order form?

Willow took the paper gingerly. "Um, six?"

"Yes, and how many Oroborus Chalice and Ritual Plate Sets are sitting on the counter?"

"Five?"

"You are very intelligent. Yes, five! And I ordered six! Does Goblin's Goblets and Fine Mystical China know that they have hired illiterate, dumb people to send their orders to their customers? I will not give them any more money if they are going to waste it like this!"

She disappeared into the office, leaving Willow, Tara and Dawn staring after her.

"Wow. Not her everyday, smiling, ex-demon self, is she?" Tara said. 

Willow, already distracted, was moving towards the stairs to the loft. "I need to look up something in one of Giles' books. I'll be right back down."  


Tara watched her go with a worried look. 

"What do you think right back' means? Two hours or three?" Dawn asked as she tried to put the counter back in order.  


Tara smiled wanly. "All she thinks about is magic these days. Magic and patrolling. It's like college doesn't mean anything to her any more."

"What's the biggie? Magic rules, school drools," Dawn said.

"But that's not Willow. Willow has always been College Girl, you know? She loves going to class and studying stuff other than magic, like computers, and history, and astrophysics, and ." Tara was struck by an idea. "Hey, Dawnie? You could talk with her. Maybe ask her for help on your homework or something. You two were always into the whole school thing."

"Uh, sure, Tara. But we don't have a lot of homework yet. You know–first week of school and all." 

"Well, anything you could do would be a big help." She gave Dawn a hug across the counter. "I'm so proud of you. You're such a good friend to everyone. I'll see you later, kay? I have to go to the bookstore. If Willow comes down before I get back, could you tell her I'll be back in an hour?"

"No problem. I'm sure we'll be here," Dawn said. Tara smiled and left. 

"Excuse me, Dawn, could I have a minute please?" Giles looked awful. He was showered and shaved and dressed neatly–ever British, he was always up to the mark. But his face was drawn, and he'd lost weight. The shadows under his eyes told of many sleepless nights–about four months' worth–and the hand holding a pen and a notebook shook slightly. 

"Sure, Mr. Giles," Dawn answered. "What can I do for you? Would you like me to pick you up something for dinner?"

"N-no, thank you. I need to talk with you again about the n-night" his voice trailed off and his eyes became distant for a moment.

"The night Buffy died," Dawn said, her face growing still and haunted.

"Yes, that is correct," Giles said. "Dawn, I have more questions about Doc. I've been reading about various underworld demons, and I think I may have a lead on precisely what kind of demon he is, or was."

"Sure, Mr. Giles. I'd love to help," Dawn said, getting up. "But I have a lot of homework to do tonight. Could we talk about this later? You know, schoolwork comes first."

__

"Of course, Dawn." Giles nodded. "Later then." He wandered back into the office, never seeing Dawn's look of relief, and the surreptitious swipe at her eyes.

The sun had just set, and a full moon was rising. It was time to patrol. Instead of heading to the cemetery, though, Spike was walking toward the Magic Box to pick up Willow. Most of the shops on Main Street were closed; only the Magic Box tended to draw an evening clientele. He had just paused for a moment to flick his cigarette to the ground and stamp it out when he heard it, a muffled scream. Unbidden, his bloodlust rose in anticipation, and he took a few steps in the direction of the sound. He shook off the demon, tried to regain his bearings. What was he, a bloody ambulance chaser? He couldn't feed any more, and besides, he didn't want this. He didn't want any of it. 

He'd drawn close enough to hear voices, a loud, deep voice threatening murder, a higher, more feminine voice, pleading. Then, the voice changed, no longer plaintive but angry: "Get the hell away from my daughter, you bastard!" He found himself running closer and turned a corner into a back alley to see a woman, her daughter behind her, something large and ominous raising its arm to her. Spike didn't stop to think. He felt rage, and he acted. He hurled himself at the large figure, fangs bared and aimed at the throat–and fell to the ground with a roar and a searing headache. A human! Not a demon attack! Through the mist of pain, he saw the woman take advantage of the man's momentary inattention to pull something out of her purse. The hiss and subsequent agonized cry told Spike that it must have been pepper spray. He huddled on the ground, his head aching from the force of the chip's pain, the groans of the mugger, and the screams of the woman and her daughter. Then he saw flashing lights–oh good, the police. The bloody, ineffectual Sunnydale police. 

They were cuffing the mugger, talking to the woman, who was explaining that the blond man with the black coat had tried to save them. Spike grimaced to himself. Yeah, and a fine job of it he'd done. Chalk up one more failure for William the Bloody. The woman had saved herself, her and her daughter. He couldn't help remembering another woman, another daughter–and an axe. 

Spike wasn't a hero. He never would be.

He felt a presence next to him and looked up. It was the daughter, a mite of a thing, all wispy blonde pigtails, skinned knees and tear-streaked face. 

"Mister? You ok, mister?"

"Yeah, kid." He sighed. "I'm okay."

This was okay. In fact, it was nice. Real nice. Well, it was Heaven, so by definition it about topped the list of All-Time Nice Things. 

Buffy Summers was dead. She wasn't sure how long she had been, but since this was Heaven, it didn't really matter much. She was sitting on a bench in the Elysian Fields, catching up with her mother, when a white-robed figure glided up to her. 

__

"Will you come with me please?"

The question was rhetorical. Before she could open her mouth to give her assent, much less say so much as "See you later, Mom," Buffy found herself standing in a bare room in front of three more white-robed figures.

__

"You must return." It was a deep voice, but it didn't make a sound, echoing instead inside Buffy's head. 

"Return? Where?" she asked.

"Back to your life. Back to Sunnydale."  


Buffy smiled wryly. "Hello? I bought a one-way ticket. Death isn't a round trip. I read the handbook, I know this."

"You must return."

"Uh, yeah. Repeat yourself much? I can't go back, and besides, I'm not going to. I like it here. My mother is here..."

"You are needed at the Hellmouth. It is prophesied."

Buffy felt anger for the first time since she'd been to Heaven. 

"Another prophecy? Haven't you people uh, powers had enough of me and prophecies? I did my time. I saved the world a good six times. Go Choose someone else for a change!"

"The Prophecy must be fulfilled."

"Fill it yourself," she snapped, turning to walk away.

She felt herself being picked up and turned to face forward.

"Remember this prophecy. Remember the words of your Spirit Guide:

Between the Two Lights and the Two Darks

The Slayer who is not one

Shall restore the balance

With love."

__

"No!" She cried out. "I don't want to go back! I loved. I gave, I forgave. I did it all. Love, love is pain. I've had enough. Please."

Her pleas went unheard.

It was 8:30 p.m., and the Magic Box had finally closed. Anya was counting money, Tara and Dawn were sitting at the table playing with the tarot cards, Giles was in the office, and Willow was still up in the loft, reading. 

The door opened, and Xander walked in.

"Well, hello, fine people. And may I introduce you all to the new Assistant Foreman of Donovan Construction's carpentry crew?"

Anya's face lit up. "You're the boss now? That means more money and less work, right?"

"Uh, yes and no, honey. It means more money and more responsibility."

Anya's face fell. "More responsibility is more work. I don't like it. I'll never see you. We'll never "

Xander interrupted. "Play Parcheesi, I know, Ahn. We have some rollicking games of Parcheesi, but we'll just have to cut down on that a little."

"Oh, is that what they call it these days?" Spike had entered from the back room, smirking at the domestic drama unfolding. 

"Xander, since we're all here, why don't we order pizza or something?" Dawn intervened, wanting to head off another battle between the vampire and the carpenter.

"Oh, Spike, good, you're here." Willow came down the steps, carrying an open book. "I found this spell that I think will help us locate vampire nests. If it works, we'll be able to dust almost as many vamps per week as Buffy ever did. We can use it in addition to the ball of sunshine spell I've been using, since you, uh, can't really use the ball of sunshine too safely..." She looked up from the book and noted the crowd. "Oh, hi everyone! Is it dinnertime already?"

__

"It was dinnertime two hours ago," Tara said, uncharacteristically sulky.

"Dawn," Giles entered from the back room. "Are you ready to go over those e-events again? This is really necessary for my report to the Council of Watchers."

Dawn was trembling, and Spike noticed. "Back off, Rupert," he growled. "Not now. The bleeding Watchers can wait a little longer."

"Actually, Spike, the Watchers need to know as soon as possible. If Doc is a minion of Glorificus and is not dead, he may be trying to find a way to bring her back as we speak. Dawn's memories can help us prevent Doc from beginning another apocalypse."

"If he comes back, he's dead. I will tear him to bits with my teeth and leave a piece in every corner of the bloody globe. Dawn doesn't have to be involved."

"You're wrong, Spike. We do need her. She is ."

"Stop it!" Dawn cried out, standing up from the table.

Everyone turned to look at her, shocked.

"Just stop it right now! I don't want all this yelling! I don't want all this anger! Buffy's gone! She's gone!"  
  
She fell to her knees, crying. 

"She's gone, and nothing is right any more. Everyone is crying, or angry, or just not themselves any more. I wish it was back the way it was. I wish Buffy were back!"

As she buried her head in her hands and began sobbing, a white light began to glow next to her. It glowed, and grew, and swirled, and with a blinding flash, it vanished

leaving behind a small figure, dressed in brown pants and an ivory turtleneck sweater, shoulder-length blonde hair slightly ruffled from the swirling energy.

"Oh my god...dess." Willow whispered. Dawn raised her tear-streaked face in confusion. 

Buffy Summers lifted her head to find seven stunned faces looking at her. She was back in Sunnydale, back home. She'd made a U-turn on the road to Heaven and had traveled back to where it all had started.

She burst into tears.

__

   [1]: http://www.bloodyawfulpoet.com/
   [2]: http://people.ne.mediaone.net/shavorclan/)



	2. Second Chances

Episode 1: Resurrection

Dark Side of the Moonby Archivesgrrl and Cobweb

Episode 2:Second Chances

RATING:Overall PG-13. Some parts will have an NC-17 version posted to

fanfiction.net and Of Muses and Minions. All episodes posted to BAPS will

be PG-13.

SPOILERS:Through "The Gift." 

SUMMARY:This is an AU Season 6 fic. Each chapter is a self-contained

"episode," with the exception of the first two, which are linked (a

two-parter). We plan 22 "episodes."

ARCHIVE: BAPS (http://www.bloodyawfulpoet.com) and Of Muses and Minions

(http://people.ne.mediaone.net/shavorclan/). Others with permission.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please! Send it to archivesgrrlandcobweb@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMERS:All characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to 

Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. 

THANKS:Larissa, for the awesome beta reading!

****

Buffy crumpled in a heap beside her sister. Dawn was the first to move among the shocked bunch, rushing to Buffy and throwing her arms around her, weeping with joy instead of the grief she had shown a moment before. "Buffy, you're back, you're here," she sobbed, trembling and still tearful. "I wished you back and you're here! You're here!" 

Dawn rocked her sibling as she slowly began to calm her shaking breaths. Willow and Giles drew closer, kneeling down beside the two sisters. "Buffy?" Giles whispered. "Is it really you?" 

Buffy looked up, her face wet and eyes red and swollen. "Giles..." A look of pain crossed her face as she looked around the room.

"Willow...Everyone...Everyone is here. I'm here. I'm really here." Another sob racked her body as she closed her eyes and began to rock again.

"Buffy, do – do you know how you came to be here?" Willow asked gently. "Was it magic? Did someone do a ritual?" Willow glanced first at Dawn, who paled beneath the teary splotches, but she shook her head negatively at Willow. A quick look at Spike revealed that he was standing, still but trembling, where he had been before the swirl of light had deposited Buffy among them. His face showed a mixture of shock, joy, and a hint of what looked like guilt. His eyes met Willow's and she decided that the shock outweighed the guilt. He hadn't been expecting this.

"They threw me out of heaven." 

Buffy's voice sounded dry, as if the tears she had shed had drained all the moisture from her body. 

"Threw you out?" Xander sounded confused. "Who threw you out? How?"

"The Powers That Be. They said I was needed back here. There's some prophecy..." Buffy stopped and her eyes grew dull. 

"So long as you're home!" Dawn tried to pull her sister close again, beginning to smile at last. "I don't care why, so long as you're home. I missed you so much, Buffy! We all did." Buffy looked down at Dawn and for the first time, there was a hint of something other than pain and hurt in her face. She gently kissed Dawn on her forehead, although she still looked sad and drawn.

"Well -- " said Anya. "Looks like Giles is going to need to write another long-winded report for the Council." 

****

Buffy draped the scarf around her neck and began to knot it, but paused, staring in the mirror at the delicate webwork of scars that glinted silvery white a few inches under her right ear. She ran a finger tentatively over the bite marks left by the Master, Angel and Dracula, feeling the thread-like ropiness. "New life, but same old body, same old scars," she thought dryly. Briskly tying the knot in the scarf, she turned away from the mirror. Correction. Not a new life but the same old life. Same old life she had grown so weary of before the night she fought Glory: The never-ending battles. The never-ending Slaying. The never-ending choices that seemed too hard to make. Here she was again, back in full-Slay mode. 

"Same old scars, inside and out," she thought wearily. Everyone had been so thrilled to see her when she suddenly appeared in the magic shop two weeks ago. Everyone had been nearly as shocked and disoriented as Buffy herself, but ecstatic at her return. When Buffy had crumpled to the floor in a sobbing heap, her sister and friends had mistakenly thought her tears were shared feelings of relief and shock, not the frustration and exhaustion she had actually been experiencing. 

" 'Death was my gift,' '' she thought bitterly. "Who knew that the Powers That Be would give it to me with one hand only to turn around and take it away afterwards? The gift that keeps on giving. Everyone gets the freedom of death but the Slayer." She snorted as she let the door slam on the way out of the house. She had a Scooby meeting to attend. More planning for more fighting for more deaths that weren't hers. Yippee.

****

The bell over the door to the magic shop tinkled as Dawn entered.

"Is she here yet?" Dawn swung her backpack onto the counter at the Magic Box and peered towards the back of the store. "Is she in back training with Giles?" 

"No, Giles is working on his report for the Watcher's Council, and I haven't seen Buffy yet today. And I have to say, it's kind of nice to say that," Anya chirped from her post behind the cash register. "I'm really happy that Xander and I could finally stop living with you now that Buffy is back to take care of you. It's good to have our own place again and not have that all that responsibility and inconvenience." Dawn raised an eyebrow as Anya cheerfully straightened bills in the money drawer. 

"Not that we minded living with you at all, Dawnster," Xander chimed in quickly from a nearby table where he sat beside Willow, his face flushing. "We were more than happy to help out while things were getting ... settled. Although I think I could have done without the deja vu of having Spike as a housemate." 

"Especially with his vampire hearing. We were barely having sex any more because Xander was even more worried about Spike hearing us than you, Dawn," Anya grumbled as Xander turned an even brighter shade of red.

"Ew, too much information!" Dawn rolled her eyes. "In that case, I guess I'd have to say I'm glad you guys moved back to your own place, too." Dawn unzipped a pouch on her backpack and began to search for something. "Anya, can I borrow some gift wrap and tape? I got a little something for Buffy and I wanted to wrap it to make it look nice. Please?" She pulled her hand out of the backpack pouch, carefully clutching something small enough to be hidden in her cupped fist. 

"Ooooh, a surprise for Buffy? Can I see?" Willow wriggled in her seat beside Xander, pushing away the thick copy of _Theories of Magickal Egregore_ that she had been reading. "Special occasion or just a -- a 'I'm glad you're alive, welcome back' kind of gift?" 

Dawn shrugged. "Mostly that, I guess. I just wanted to show her I missed her while she was ... gone." Dawn's voice had trailed a bit and then firmed as she finished the sentence. She flattened out her palm and with a fingertip from the other hand poked gently at the pair of earrings nestled there. "What do you think? They're ankhs. Egyptian symbols of resurrection and new life. I thought it was pretty cool and kind of appropriate. Given Buffy's situation." 

Tara, who had been browsing the bookshelves in the rune section, came over to join Xander, Willow and Anya as they gathered around Dawn and her gift. The earrings, shaped like crosses with a loop at the top, were made of gold and set with oval black onyx stones at the center where the arms and loop met. "Wow, Dawn," murmured Willow. "Are they real? They look ... expensive." She frowned a bit at the earrings and then up at the teenager, who shrugged again noncommittally. 

"I had a little money saved," Dawn said nonchalantly. "I better get them wrapped up before she gets here." She pulled her hand away from the group and turned to the counter, looking pointedly at Anya to remind her to get the wrapping paper. 

Tara, who had said nothing about the earrings, watched with a troubled look as Anya, Xander and Dawn concentrated on wrapping the gift. "Willow," she finally said softly enough that only her lover could hear, "where do you think she really got them?" 

Willow startled. "Why, don't you believe her?" she answered in an equally low tone so as to not be overheard. 

Tara paused. "It's just a feeling. The earrings themselves seem fine, no bad energies or anything, but I just had a weird moment where I felt there was something wrong about her having them. As if she didn't come by them in a good way." 

Willow glanced over to where Anya was helping Dawn put a final bit of ribbon on the small package. "Uh, should I ask? What do I say? 'Hey, Dawnie, did you steal those from someplace?' Tara, are you sure about what you felt?" Willow's brow wrinkled in worry. "I don't like being false accusation girl if we don't have some kind of proof."

Tara shook her head, "I know, it was just an uneasy feeling. Definitely nothing concrete to go on. I guess...I guess we could just ignore it. Maybe it's nothing. Just weird vibey stuff." She sighed. "It wasn't a REALLY bad feeling or anything ... just a little teeny bad one." 

Willow leaned over and gave her girlfriend a kiss on the forehead. "Well, we'll let it go for now. Hey, and black onyx is a healing and balancing stone for Capricorns like Buffy! Dawn couldn't have picked a better gift for someone newly resurrected!" Willow grinned a little nervously as Tara returned a subdued smile.

The bell over the shop door jingled again as Buffy came into the Magic Box, her stride businesslike and her mouth pinched into a rather forced smile. "Hi, all. Dawn, how was school?" 

Dawn tossed a glossy hank of hair over her shoulder and made a face. "Same old, same old. I'm starting to get used to finding my way around the high school, but it's still the same group of dweebs from junior high, just in a new building." 

"Well, it beats going to school in the burning ruins left behind by my graduating class, doesn't it?" Dawn's head snapped up at the sudden, sharp and bitter retort from Buffy. 

"Hey, Buff, better crispy, burned-down high school than being eaten by a giant snake about to become pure demon, don't ya think? Buildings are...are replaceable, but classmates aren't," stuttered Willow, trying to break the sudden tension. "And I'm sure Dawnie isn't likely to face another school-based apocalypse anytime soon. I think you – we – kind of skewed the statistical probabilities for that way off for her generation, even on a Hellmouth. Sort of like that theory that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Only, you know, science shows it is actually more likely to hit the same spot -- " Willow snapped her mouth shut, realizing that she was off into dangerous territory again. 

Buffy didn't reply, but simply stared rather stonily at the group gathered around the counter. 

"Dawn, maybe you should give Buffy her present now. It might make her forget about the Mayor and the high school and all that burning and eating and the lightning strikes." Anya nodded her head so that her hair bounced as she nudged Dawn and gestured at the small gift lying beside the cash register. 

"A present?" Buffy's face softened in surprise, as Dawn picked up the small package and thrust it rather gracelessly at her. 

"I thought it might cheer you up," Dawn muttered. "Sort of a 'welcome back home' present. Because I really did miss you." 

Buffy opened the small package carefully and smiled in genuine pleasure as she looked at the earrings. "They're beautiful, Dawn." Buffy pulled her sister to her in a warm hug. "Thank you. I'll wear them proudly." She held her close for another moment and then said softly, "Sorry I was growly just now. I'm just -- " Buffy didn't finish but shrugged helplessly, shaking her head. "Never mind. Okay, so where is Giles? Don't we have a meeting scheduled? Dawn, you should get started on your homework." 

"So much for a warm, sisterly moment," Dawn muttered as she took a notebook and text out of her backpack and settled at the table to work.

"My, aren't we straight-to-business woman," said Xander, pulling out a chair opposite Dawn. "You know, Buff, no one would think badly of you if you kind of eased back into the Slaying gig rather than pushing yourself the way you have since you – you got back. We did have things pretty much under control for the four months you were gone. Between Willow's spells, Spike's sometimes frightening need to kill things and the rest of us pitching in, we didn't do too badly at keeping the demony population under control. It's not like you have to get right out there and slay because Sunnydale has gone to hell in a handbasket while you were gone." 

Buffy shot Xander a chilly look and the last bit of warmth in the room evaporated. "The Powers That Be brought me back to do a job. Are you trying to tell me I shouldn't do it? Wouldn't that make my being here pretty pointless?" 

Willow shifted uncomfortably at the renewed tension. "Xander is just trying to tell you not to feel obligated to try so hard, Buffy. I mean, you were, well, you know -- "

"Dead?" Buffy cocked her head. "You can say it, Will. I was dead. And in the afterlife. Enjoying it." 

" – dead, and, and we were taking care of things while you were gone, so you don't need to be so – so – Slayerholicy." Willow shrugged apologetically at the term. "It's just that you seem to be so determined to go out every night and just slay those demons and stake those vamps like there's no tomorrow and I think it's been making you kind of – well -- "

"Bitchy," volunteered Anya from behind the cash register. "We all missed you Buffy, but you seem like you kind of got up on the wrong side of the afterlife since you came back." 

Xander groaned quietly as Buffy's eyes narrowed. 

" – cranky. I was going to say 'cranky,' " Willow finished. "Buffy, we're all happy to see you getting back to normal – whatever that is on the Hellmouth – but I just don't think you need to take on the whole burden of Slaying as if you are the only one who can do it."

Buffy made an exasperated noise. "Hellooo, Will, Chosen One here! Sure, you guys always helped me before, but, still, slaying is MY job. MY role. It's why I was brought back. To kill evil things. And fulfill prophecies." 

"Yeah, we know, the whole Balance thing. But, Buffy, it's not as if we're facing an imminent apocalypse at the moment. Just the usual demon and vampire killing. Why can't you just relax and enjoy that while you can? Well, as much as you can enjoy demon and vampire killing, I mean." Willow said awkwardly. "Why rush yourself?"

An expression almost like pain flitted over Buffy's face, but was gone before anyone could notice.

"Right. No rushing." Buffy's lips tightened and she sat down at the research table with the rest of the Scoobies. "So, in a non-rushy way, what did we find out about the funky demon that I saw last night on patrol? Because I'd really like to go out and kill it tonight. I may not get a second chance." 

"Shades of Dead Boy Jr. Always gotta go for the whole kill-it-now thing," Xander muttered under his breath. 

"Xander, I don't tell you how to lay bricks and hammer nails into boards; please don't tell me how to do my job." Buffy's voice was as sharp as a piece of broken glass. 

Tara looked anxiously at Willow, whose own brow was wrinkled in distress. 

"Buffy, Xander wasn't trying to tell you how to do your job," Willow finally said. "He's just trying to make you understand that we can help you. We were doing fine this summer when you weren't here. Not as good as a real Slayer, granted, but not too shabby. Just the sunshine spell alone helped us dust a whole bunch of vamps and that was stake-free –"

"Good, then you really don't need me here, do you? You can all just take care of things without me. Willow, you and Tara can do your little sunshine spells and Xander and Anya can patrol between picking out china patterns and Giles can just keep his head buried in books and reports and Spike can – can just go on killing anything that moves. You don't need me. So why the HELL am I here?" Buffy pushed herself angrily away from the table. "I'm not in the mood to sit here and talk, talk, talk about things when there's a job I'm evidently SUPPOSED to be doing, even if you all were doing it fine without me. I'm going to go fulfill my destiny and kill something." 

The bell over the Magic Box door jangled furiously as Buffy angrily exited the shop. 

Dawn sat, staring at the twin ankhs lying on the table. Buffy had forgotten her earrings.

****

Spike lit a fresh smoke and leaned lightly against the bark of a tree, enjoying the combined scents of the burning tobacco and the autumn leaves rustling overhead. In the dark of the moonless night, the bright flare of the cigarette tip stood out like a beacon in the cemetery. 

"Just hanging out, or are you trying to make sure all the demons can spot you from 100 yards away?" 

Spike took another deep drag on his cigarette and carefully stilled his expression to avoid showing a reaction. "Slayer." If he had a beating heart, it would have been pounding like a trip hammer. 

Twelve days. Twelve bloody days since he had packed his smaller, more portable belongings and left her house and she hadn't been to see him. He could take a hint. He'd seen her patrolling, though. He'd made it his business to keep tabs on her at a distance, to make sure she was handling things okay. And waited to see if she would come to him. 

She hadn't. 

He saw that she had a stake clutched in her right hand and he wondered if it was for him. After all, she hadn't always been the most grateful of chits. While he knew the Scoobies had told her what he had done for Dawn – for all of them, for HER – while she was gone, he wouldn't have been that surprised to find that she was angry at him for his failure to protect Dawn from Doc. Hell, he was still angry at himself. His royal fuck-up on that hell tower had cost Buffy her life, so far as he was concerned. If he couldn't forgive himself, why should she? 

Buffy stared at Spike as he stood, silent, the only motion the movement of the light from his cigarette as it moved from his lips to a midair point where he flicked his ash and back again. 

"You know, you left a ton of stuff in my basement." Her voice was neutral.

Spike shrugged. "Well, didn't seem the right time to be moving my things out. I can come get them tomorrow evening if you want. Early after sunset."

The dark silence stretched between them.

Everyone had told her what he had done while she was gone. How he had taken over patrolling with Willow. How he had stayed in the basement of her house, watching over Dawn during the long months of her absence. But what she remembered, what she dwelt on as she stood regarding him in the dark, was that he vanished so soon after she arrived. It had been a relief to her to find that Spike was the one watching out for Dawn's safety and that he had taken over so much of the Slaying duty. But two days after her return, he was gone. She felt strangely bereft of some crucial piece of support and it added to the resentment already bubbling in her heart about being brought back.

"You hurt Dawn." 

The small, orange dot of light halted near his face and she could smell the smoke as it drifted towards her on the cool night air. She was suddenly acutely aware of his lack of breath and his preternatural stillness. For once, he really might as well have been dead instead of full of that unlikely vitality she had always associated with him.

"She didn't understand why you had to leave just because I came back," she continued.

The light began to move again. "Well, she's fourteen, isn't she? She wouldn't 'understand.' " He snorted and took a deep drag of the cigarette.

"I'm twenty and I don't think I understand." Buffy's voice grew colder. "You made me a promise and I trusted you to keep it..." She quivered inside as she thought of how true that was. She had trusted him to be there for Dawn. And for her. But as soon as she came back, he'd disappeared. Left her by herself to bear all of the burdens alone when she still needed his help.

The ember of the cigarette arced sharply into the dirt, where Spike ground it into darkness with a violent twist of his boot. "Yeah, well, we both know about me and promises, don't we?" he growled. "You knew what I was when I made that promise. Don't tell me you're all surprised now that I failed to keep it." His mind flashed to the moment he realized what his failure had cost him, what it had cost HER, and his mouth tightened. 

Buffy stared at him for a moment, the hurt and frustration suddenly sharp and volcanic within her, and then her fist flew out through the darkness, landing near his mouth, cutting it open against his teeth and knocking him off center but not onto the ground.

Spike laughed bitterly and wiped at the blood seeping from between his lips. "Yeah, saw that coming," he muttered darkly. "Surprised if that's all you give me, though. Come on, Buffy, I saw your face the two days before I left you and Nibblet alone. I saw the bitterness. The anger. There's gotta be more in there. Give it to me, Buffy...you know you want to." He stepped closer to her, suddenly invading her personal space, close enough that she could smell the coppery tang of the blood on his face. He leaned over, intimately, and said sotto voce, "And baby, I want you to." He smirked at her, a strange, mocking smile that suddenly enraged her, and instantly her fists were flying towards him in the inky blackness, her feet kicking at him. 

He laughed, a continuous high-pitched chuckle, as he defended himself with blocks, dodging a move here and there, but surprisingly often stepping into the punches in a way that seemed almost deliberate. She flailed at him with her limbs, beating at his face and his gut until he was finally on the ground, where he simply stopped moving and just lay there against the dark autumn earth, wheezing between laughs, his eyes closed. 

"What's so funny?" she finally spit out, standing over him, shaking with adrenaline.

"Nothing, pet. Nothing." The voice drifted up through the dark, sounding strangely choked. It almost sounded like a sob. Then, after he made a sound as if to clear his throat, she heard him say dryly, "Well, this puts us back on normal footing again, doesn't it? You beating the hell out of me – seems like old times. Same old Slayer." 

Buffy stared down at the darkness, where everything but Spike's head and hands blended in against the grass. In the little bit she could see of the pale oval of his face in the dark, she detected the shadow of blood, trickling from his mouth and his nose. "Oh, god," she whispered. And she began to cry. 

Spike lay on the ground, stunned as he heard her start to sob. As the cries grew more uncontrolled, almost hysterical, he leaned up on his elbow and frowned into the dark, his own despair and self-loathing forgotten. "Buffy?" He sought to see her more clearly, difficult without the light of the moon to aid him. He started as she crumpled down beside him into the cold grass, the noises she was making becoming laced with hiccups and keening. 

"Buffy? Luv?" He rolled onto his knees, leaning towards her in the blackness. This unexpectedly fragile reaction was beginning to scare him. He had expected her to be angry, to want to hurt him, to relish hurting him the way he wanted to hurt himself for his failure, not this sudden, horrible display of what looked like grief. "Buffy, what's wrong, pet? Why are you crying?" 

Buffy had curled herself into a ball on the grass and was rocking back and forth on her knees, arms doubled around her waist as if holding herself together, making little animalistic noises that terrified Spike. He crept closer, finally, in desperation, reaching out to touch her shoulder. To his surprise, she didn't pull away, but continued to rock and wail, letting his hand rest on her as her body pivoted back and forth in the dark. He could feel that she was shaking violently and she was still refusing to answer, just gulping and sobbing and making dreadful, wet-sounding gasps. 

They were nothing compared to the moment she started to scream, though. 

The sound echoed through the cemetery and made his demon blood run cold. It rose, louder and shriller, until he thought her throat would rupture from the strain of it. And it didn't sound as if she ever intended to stop.

Spike knelt beside her, cold with terror and a sudden rush of helplessness that echoed that moment when he had failed her. What the hell had he done to her? Damned game-playing, damned pride, damned inability to tell her honestly that he hated that he had failed her, that he was ashamed of himself for it, that he couldn't blame her if she hated him for getting her killed by failing to protect Dawn. That he wanted her to pound him into the ground for having disappointed her. 

"Buffy, please stop. Please stop. Baby, you'll hurt yourself. Don't do this to yourself. You don't need to do this to yourself," he coaxed. Somewhere beyond the fear, he suddenly realized that a screaming and hysterical Slayer was at risk if they were not alone in the cemetery. "Buffy!" He said more sharply. "Slayer, stop it. You're going to get us both killed if you don't quiet down!" He winced with guilt and a slight twinge of pain from his head as he grabbed her shoulder and shook it roughly. 

At this, the shrieking suddenly mutated into laughter, which was possibly more terrifying to hear, although it was less likely to attract attention than the previous caterwauling. "Damn it, Slayer! What's so bleeding funny?" Spike grated, not sure whether to be relieved that the screaming had stopped or unnerved at the way it had.

"That's – that's what I want," Buffy gasped out, pulling away from his hand and slipping onto the grass on her back. Her laughter died down to chuckles as he stared down at her in horror. 

"What the hell do you mean, 'That's what I want'?" he hissed. "To get killed?"

"You told me. Don't you remember?" Buffy's mouth twitched as if she were trying to avoid smiling at the irony. "Slayers have a death wish, Spike. Eventually we want to die." Her voice grew quieter and more serious. "I wanted it that night when I jumped, you know. I didn't do it just to save Dawn. I did it to save myself. I was ready. I couldn't take it any more." 

He stared at her. "Take what? Life?" 

She nodded at him solemnly in the dark, resting quietly now with her hair coming loose in strands around her head and fanning out in stray bits on the grass. "This life. Slaying. I couldn't do it any more, Spike. You were right." Her voice drifted off. 

"Oh, god." Spike closed his eyes. If he had blamed himself for her death before, it was nothing to what he felt at this moment. She had taken his words, his game-playing, his attempt to push her into reacting to him and used it as the rationale to essentially commit suicide. He really WAS to blame for her death, more directly than he had ever imagined. He felt sick and wondered what the Slayer would think if he suddenly puked beside her on the grass. 

"But they made me come back, Spike." Her voice sounded earnest and tired now. "The Powers That Be don't care whether I am tired or overwhelmed or whether I can take it. I have to be here. There's a prophecy. And prophecies must be fulfilled, you know." She had opened her eyes and was staring up at the stars quietly, almost thoughtfully.

"What bleeding prophecy?" Spike finally asked when she just laid there, her breath beginning to slow. 

"Between the Two Lights and the Two Darks

The Slayer who is not one

Shall restore the balance

With love." 

"Uh-HUH," Spike grunted at her recitation. "Any idea what it means? Or is that a bugger-all silly question, given the Powers That Be?" He damn well hated prophecies and their cryptic predictions. They made his head hurt. Sensing that the worst of the hysteria was over, he lay back on the cool grass beside Buffy, staring up at the moonless night. 

"It means I had to come back to slay," Buffy answered wearily. "And I'm tired of slaying, Spike." 

Spike frowned and glanced over at her. He could just barely see the paleness of her hair in the dark. "Uh, Slayer...For someone who is tired of slaying, can I ask why you've been doing so bloody much of it lately, then?" 

Buffy turned her eyes from the stars for the first time in several moments and looked in Spike's direction. "What?"

"Well, I probably shouldn't admit this – seeing as you're likely to stake me for stalking you or somethin' – but I've been kind of keeping an eye on you on your patrols." He paused to see how she reacted, but she said nothing and didn't flinch as if tempted to reach for the stake that had fallen to the ground near her when the upset had started. Feeling reasonably secure he wasn't about to be dusted for that admission, Spike continued. "Luv, you've been going at it since you came back like nothing else mattered. I've seen you, prowling for hours, making kill after kill after kill every night, like you couldn't get enough. More than me and Will did all summer, no matter what she says about her soddin' ball of sunshine trick." He snorted a bit. "If you don't want to Slay, then what's that about?" 

Buffy lay on the cool grass, feeling strangely peaceful after the earlier tumult. Maybe what they said about releasing your emotions was true. Or maybe she was just comfortably numb. But here she was, suddenly struck by the fact that she was having a heart-to-heart with Spike of all people. And she felt like telling him what she had been afraid to say to the others. She knew he could handle it. 

"Because it's all I'm good at," she whispered. "I'm a great Slayer, Spike. And, much as I hate it for killing off the humanity in me, it's the only thing I have left. It's what   
The Powers brought me back to do. To slay. To save the world. To be all that and a bag of chips in the killing department." 

"Oh, bollocks!" Spike blurted, half-sitting up abruptly. "What the hell do you mean, 'It's all I'm good at'? What a fucking load of rubbish, Buffy." 

"Oh, come on, Spike. You know it's true. You've said as much yourself in the past." Buffy leaned up onto an arm as well, shaking her head at him in the dark. "You've seen how my relationships implode. My own friends couldn't tell me from a freaking robot, for god's sake!" She threw herself back against the ground and closed her eyes again. "I'm just not a people person any more. Slaying took that out of me," she said sadly. "I should just go with it. Do my job. Not focus on the rest of it. All that emotional, people-y stuff."

"Oh, you mean all that emotional, people-y stuff that makes up life?" Spike sounded angry. "Look here, Summers. I did not spend the last four months of my existence watching over the Nibblet and sticking to Will's color-coded slaying schedule and watching Xander and his demon making googly eyes at one another over breakfast just to have you come back and tell me that the last you thing you said to Dawn before jumping to your death was wrong. Goddammit, do NOT take that away from me!" Spike sat up fully, slammed a fist into the grass and ripped up a clod of turf and flung it angrily into the night. "So you've dated some right ponces. What does it matter? You've still got your precious Scoobies and Dawn. Are you trying to tell me that they don't matter to you?"

"Of course they matter!" Buffy burst out. "Too much, Spike. That's the problem." She was beginning to tear up again, but her tears this time were quieter, softer. "I died for Dawn because I loved her and – and all of you. You guys were the world to me and I did what I needed to do. I loved, I gave, I forgave, and I jumped. And I thought it would finally be over. All the hurt. All the failure. All the struggle." She was weeping softly again and brushing her hands against her eyes repeatedly to keep the tears from streaming down her face. "And I was rewarded. I was with Mom. Things were good. Peaceful. And I accepted that that was it for me and finally was letting go all the – the hurt of being alive." She sniffled thickly. "And they took it all away in an instant. Told me that I wasn't done. Basically, that what I had done wasn't good enough. I feel like it's just never enough, Spike. So I guess I have to try harder this time. They've given me a second chance to do it right. Maybe next time, they'll let me stay." 

Spike plucked another clump of grass up and tossed it, his anger at her having transferred to the high and mighty Powers That Fuck With You who had obviously mucked up his Slayer's emotional well-being with their give-and-take-away games. He sighed heavily and turned to her. "Buffy," he began hesitantly, "The Powers That Be are a bunch of wankers. You know that. But it doesn't make sense to me that they would send you back with this prophecy about balance and love and what-all and then expect you to – to stop lovin' people." He ran his hand through his hair and sighed again. "You know how I once said that bit about every Slayer having a death wish?" His voice was rough. He didn't want to have to remind her, but it needed to be said for her sake, so he plunged onwards. Sod his regret and humiliation. "Luv, I also told you that it was your ties to the world that kept you from giving up. It's still true, Buffy. You have so much love in you. I know it's there. That's what makes you a great Slayer. Not all the fighting and kicking and killing. It's that you really care enough to keep fighting. You have a personal stake in it." 

She was listening to him quietly now, her tears beginning to dry on her face, just studying him in the dark as if something were beginning to make sense to her. 

"Could be that the Powers know what I told you, luv. That you are strong because of those ties, because of that love between you and everyone else and not the slaying at all. Maybe that's what you're supposed to bring into balance in this prophecy. Love and slaying." Spike shrugged and shook his head. "Hell, I don't know. But you can't keep beating yourself up and shutting people out, pet. You're not supposed to be alone in this. I'm sure of it. Sod the prophecy and sod the Powers as well. Love is what makes life worth living. I know that even if I'm dead." He chuckled wryly and was surprised when she answered with a soft giggle herself. 

"Spike?" she finally said softly after they had fallen silent for several moments. "Why did you leave our house?" 

He sat silently for a moment. "Couldn't stand you looking at me like that. Like you hated me for failing to protect Dawn from Doc. For breaking my promise to you." 

Buffy frowned in the dark at him. "Huh? Spike, what the hell are you talking about? You risked your life and nearly got killed trying to protect Dawn. How can you think I blame you for that?" 

Spike looked at her in disbelief. "Buffy, if I hadn't failed, the ritual wouldn't have started, the portal wouldn't have opened, and there would have been no need for you to fucking DIE. How can you not blame me? It was my fault you died!"

"No, it was MY choice. Even if the Powers That Be took it away from me afterwards." Buffy snorted with disgust. 

"Spike, if you want to feel guilty, fine. But you're feeling guilt for the wrong thing," Buffy said. "I was grateful for what you did for Dawn that night. I was grateful for what you did all summer." She sighed and then continued softly. "I wasn't mad at you when I came back, Spike. I was mad at life. At living. Although, I did get mad when you left. I guess – " She hesitated. "I guess I was relying on you to be there for us and it pissed me off when you suddenly weren't. I felt -- abandoned."

"Abandoned? I didn't think you needed me around. Hell, didn't think you WANTED me around." 

"Just because I looked all grumpy? When did that stop you before? You're supposed to be the – the pain in the ass that refuses to leave. No matter what I say or do." Buffy's complaint sounded forlorn and almost wistful.

"Well, Slayer, last time I tried to force my attentions on you, you told me you wanted me off the planet. Figured I'd better get while the getting's good this time. Didn't fancy being the first thing you staked in your new lease on life." 

"I've been off the planet, Spike. Much too nice for the likes of you. Think I'll have to hold off on making that threat again for a while." 

Spike smiled a little. Back to their old bantering. This was good. 

He started as Buffy's hand, warm and soft, suddenly brushed against his pale wrist. 

Her fingers pressed lightly against him, and he stilled in surprise. "Spike? I'm sorry."

"For what, pet?" He frowned in confusion.

"Beating the hell out of you before."

He grunted dismissively. "Piffle, Slayer, I was asking for it. Damn near literally. Kind of enjoyed it, actually." He smirked a bit.

"Uh, Spike, too much information there. Ew, much?" Her hand slapped playfully at his wrist before vanishing back into the dark. He could see her as she rose from the ground in the dark, brushing at her clothes. "Look at me. I look like I went rolling around on the ground."

"Better on it than in it," Spike muttered. " 'Sides, I kind of like the muddy slacks bit. I can help brush 'em off if you like." He smirked and waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively as he pushed himself to his feet. 

"Don't make me hit you again. Then I'd have to start the apologizing thing again and we'd have to do all the forgiveness all over and it could just get...weird." 

"Slayer." 

She looked at him expectantly.

"So, are we good, then? For now, I mean? You forgive me? I forgive you? We forgive ourselves?" He looked into her face solemnly.

"Yeah, Spike. We're good." She smiled at him with a small smile. "Gotta work on the self-forgiveness thing myself but, hey, it's a start." They started to walk through the cemetery side by side. 

"Yeah. Know the feeling." Spike buried his hands in his duster pockets. "Wanna go kill something?"

Buffy paused and looked up at him. "No, actually, I think I've done enough killing lately. I actually think I might go home and spend some quality time with my sister." 

"Well, don't let her talk you into playing that damn "Life" game. Little Bit cheats," Spike grumbled. 

"Oh, and I don't suppose spending four months hanging out with you had any influence on that..." 

They walked through the cemetery under the unseen shadow of the new moon.

End Episode 2


	3. Happy Birthday

Episode 3: Past Perfect ****

Dark Side of the Moon by Archivesgrrl and Cobweb

Episode 3: Happy Birthday

RATING: Overall PG-13. Some parts will have an NC-17 version posted to fanfiction.net and Of Muses and Minions. All episodes posted to BAPS will be PG-13.

SPOILERS: Through "The Gift." 

SUMMARY: This is an AU Season 6 fic. Each chapter is a self-contained "episode," with the exception of the first two, which are linked (a two-parter). We plan 22 "episodes."

ARCHIVE: BAPS ([http://www.bloodyawfulpoet.com][1]) and Of Muses and Minions ([][2]http://people.ne.mediaone.net/shavorclan/). Others with permission.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please! Send it to archivesgrrlandcobweb@yahoo.com 

DISCLAIMERS: All characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. 

THANKS: Larissa, for the awesome beta reading!

****

Episode 3: Happy Birthday

Buffy was happy–happier than she had been since she died.

It was a relief to have given up the pain, the anger following her rebirth. It took some time–a girls' night in with Willow, eating ice cream and watching bad 80s movies; a few long talks with Xander and Giles. And every day was an affirmation of her love for Dawn. The simple things like cooking dinner together, making sure Dawn did her homework, staying up late after a night of Slaying to watch tv and giggle over fashion magazines--they made her happy. They didn't seem like burdens any more. 

Tonight was Dawn's birthday, and the whole gang was gathered in the house on Revello Drive, watching the birthday girl open presents. Dawn cooed and squealed– along with an envious Anya–over her gifts: CDs, clothes, a book from Giles (who was in England finally giving his report to the Council of Watchers), a bracelet from Buffy, and surprisingly, a box of chocolates from Spike, which sent Dawn into giggles for reasons neither teen nor vampire would admit to. 

Now they were all sitting around the living room, comfortably trading demon-fighting stories. Xander was in an armchair, Anya curled in his lap, relaxed now that the excitement of gift-opening was over. Dawn and Tara were sitting on the sofa, Tara braiding Dawn's hair, and Willow was on the floor leaning against Tara's feet. Buffy was in the other armchair, and Spike, as usual, was prowling the periphery of the room, occasionally stopping to lean against the bookcase and drink from his bottle of beer. 

Xander was telling a particularly funny story about the time he and Spike had fought a Joksa demon. The rest of the gang had heard the story several times already but Buffy, of course, hadn't heard it yet. 

"So, Spike and I are whaling on this demon with axes, and Spike keeps saying Take the left!' I don't know why, but I do what he says," Xander was barely containing his mirth so he could tell the story. "Ends up this demon has a particularly charming defense mechanism–it pukes on you. But it can only puke on you from its left mouth."

Dawn looked over at Buffy. "Really, it gets less gross, more funny."

"Well, Bleach Boy here is setting me up big time. Except that what he doesn't know," and here Xander couldn't restrain himself and began laughing, "is that this Joksa demon is pals with a Chaos demon–who's standing just 10 feet away! We just couldn't see him in the trees–you know, they have that antler thing going, look like branches. And the Chaos demon does some sort of Chaos mojo, and all of a sudden this Joksa demon starts upchucking from his right mouth–all over Spike!"

Everybody laughed except Anya, who patted Xander on the arm and said, "That wasn't any more boring than the last time," and Spike, who was looking as though he hated this story more with every retelling.

"Bloody Chaos demons," he muttered. "Never give me anything but trouble."

"On that extremely appetizing note," Buffy said, "I'll go into the kitchen and bring back something chocolate-y and sparkle-y."

"Need help, Buff?" Willow asked.

"Nope. Domestic Buffy has everything covered," she smiled.

Spike's eyes tracked Buffy as she left the room, and with a look of resolve, he drained the beer bottle and followed. When he entered the kitchen, she looked up from the cake she was contemplating and arched a questioning brow at him.

"Need another drink," he said, lifting the empty bottle to show her. She nodded and shifted her attention back to the cake, which she was decorating with candles.

He returned to the doorway with a newly opened beer, then paused and watched her for a moment, all golden warmth against the backdrop of the white appliances and brown wood cabinets. She was wearing a taupe sweater and pants a shade darker. Her hair was clipped back from her face with two barrettes, and he thought he could detect a smudge of chocolate icing on her cheekbone. 

"What do you want?" Her voice came out more snippy than she intended. Old habits died hard. She looked up again and smiled more warmly, trying to take the edge off. "Don't watch me. I'm not exactly Emeril Lagasse here."

He said nothing, just tilted his head as he gazed at her.

  
"What? You're starting to bug me in that stake-y kind of way again. I thought we were past that."

"Just you remind me of Joyce right now."

"Oh." He couldn't have said anything that would have pleased her more, but she'd be damned if she told him that.

"Way to court a gal, Spike. Tell her she looks like her mother. You read that in the vampire version of The Rules?"

Spike moved over to the counter and put the beer down. "She'd be proud of you, pet. Taking of care of Dawn, making people feel good. That was just the kind of person Joyce was. The same kind of person you are."

She was too moved to say anything, so she concentrated on sticking the candles into the cake, not looking at him.

"So, that what I'm doing? Courting?" He moved closer to her, not touching her, but close enough for her to know that that was precisely he wanted to be doing. It was way too close for her comfort. She stood back a step and looked him in the eye.

"No, no courting, Spike." Because it was for the best, she ignored the way his face changed slightly, the way the heat in his eyes cooled, even as she felt a pang of regret. "Spike," she said gently. "I'm still trying to work on some sort of relationship between us that doesn't involve one of us becoming vamp chow or dust. I thought friends would be a much better start."

His jaw worked a little, and he stared into her eyes a minute. She could sense when he came to a decision. 

"Right then," he said. "Friends. Sure. I can do that." His eyes flickered over her face. "You change your mind, you know where I'll be, won't you, luv?"

"Uh, in a dark, dingy crypt watching soaps?"

He smiled again, the heat back. He reached out and brushed the brown smudge of icing from her cheekbone. "I'll be here." He backed up and turned away in one fluid motion, heading for the living room. 

"Spike, wait!"

He paused at the doorway and turned back. The momentary look of hope that flashed across his face tugged at her heart.

She swallowed. "I could use some help bringing out the cake and stuff?"

He didn't look happy. She looked away and saw the cake knife lying on the counter. A devilish idea struck her, and she picked up the knife and suddenly spun it through the air toward him.

His eyes on hers, he reached up his left hand and caught the knife cleanly at the handle. His lips quirked.

  
"Just don't ask me to carry the plates like a soddin' bus boy."

**

They were gathered around the living room singing "Happy Birthday" as Buffy brought in the cake, aglow with the light of 16 candles–15 plus one for good luck. 

"Make a wish, Dawnie!" Willow said excitedly.

"Wish for lots of money!" Anya said.

"Be careful what you wish for–you might get it," Xander said.

Dawn smiled widely, then got serious a moment, staring at the candles. She took in a deep breath and blew–but instead of the quiet whoosh of her breath, they heard ringing.

Buffy looked around at the shocked faces and laughed. "It's the doorbell. I'll get it."

Must be one of Dawn's friends, she thought. Smiling, she opened the door. 

"Hello, Buffy."  


It was Angel, holding a brightly wrapped gift in his hands, a curiously blonder Cordelia beside him.

"Buffy! Nice to see you looking so alive again. So, where's the birthday girl?" Cordy said, grabbing the gift from Angel's hands and pushing past her to enter the living room.

Buffy's smile fell.

"I called Angel yesterday and invited him and Cordy up for Dawnie's party." Willow appeared behind her, leaning closer to whisper in Buffy's ear. "He wanted to see you. He took your death really hard."

Buffy smiled again. "Of course," she said. "I'm glad to see you, Angel. Come on in." He stepped in, and she reached up and kissed him gently on the cheek

Her Slayer senses went instantly on alert. There was a very angry vampire in the area, and it wasn't Angel. 

"Will," she groaned. "Did you forget about our other guest?"

"Well, no," Willow said. "But I figured, hey, we're all adults here–except for Dawn, I suppose–and we could all have a nice civilized social event. I mean, it's been almost two years since Spike killed anything other than demons or vam–oops." She looked at Angel, crestfallen. 

"Spike's here?" Angel looked puzzled.

"Yeah, Peaches, and hello to you too." Spike walked up to them, chin raised defiantly. 

"Spike," Buffy said with a warning note in her voice.

"What is he doing here? I thought he would have left after you died," Angel said coldly.

"I was invited–how else did I get in here? I'm a special guest of the birthday girl herself." As if to confirm his words, Dawn came up behind him and put her hand on his arm protectively. 

"You let him near Dawn?" Angel was incredulous at the sight of Dawn and Spike standing together. " Buffy, how can you trust him near your sister? Are you sure he wasn't behind this whole Glory thing from the beginning? You died–that was probably what he wanted all along."

With a roar, Spike hurled himself at Angel, and they crashed back through the door into the front yard, the others following close behind. Buffy stood with her arms crossed, a look of annoyance on her face as she watched the two vampires brawling, while Willow worked on summoning her magic to separate them. The others gathered on the front steps to watch.

"Well, it wouldn't be a visit to Sunnydale without a big old demon fight, would it," Cordy said with a sigh. 

  
"We're rooting for Angel, right?" Anya asked Xander, matter-of-factly.

"Eh, if you ask me they can both dust each other," Xander said, shrugging. 

"Angel better not get dusted. I think he has my car keys in his pocket," Cordy said. 

"Tara, do something," Dawn said, anxiety in her voice. 

Tara went up to Willow and grasped her hand. As the witches chanted a spell, a golden light shimmered into place above Spike and Angel, then flung itself between the combatants, the force throwing them apart. 

Tara and Willow smiled at each other. "That was harder than I expected. There's a powerful energy between those two," Willow said. "Thanks for helping." Tara kissed her sweetly, and they retreated to the porch, their work done for now.

Dawn ran over to where Spike had fallen when the force field hit him. 

"Spike! Are you okay?"

Spike pulled himself into a sitting position, wiping blood from his mouth.

"I'm fine, Nibblet," he said, as she helped him to his feet.

Buffy walked over to where Angel sat, staring at Spike and Dawn as if their closeness offended him. She held out a hand and pulled Angel to his feet, then turned toward Spike and Dawn.

"That's enough. I expect the two of you to behave for Dawn's birthday," Buffy said. "Now, we're going to go back inside to have cake and make merry and not"

She was cut off when Cordy cried out in pain.

In a flash, Angel had left Buffy's side and was cradling a writhing Cordelia.

"Visions," he explained. "She gets them from time to time."

"Visions of what? The latest sale at Fred Segal?"

"I heard that." An annoyed Cordelia opened her eyes and glared at Buffy. "You're not the only one with superpowers anymore." She looked up at Angel. "Six demons in a circle, chanting, around two women."

"Where?" Angel asked.

"They're near a cave. Looked like it had two openings, sort of like sunglasses. Ow, that one hurt." She held her hand to her eyes .

  
"Cordy, can I get you something--water, aspirin?" Xander knelt down at her side and touched her shoulder.  
  
"Yeah," she smiled at him sweetly. "A glass of water and an aspirin." She winced. "Make that about 10 aspirin."  


"Sure." Xander went inside, Anya following as if she weren't sure she should let him out of her sight.

"Cave with two openings, huh." Spike spoke up.

"You've seen it?" Buffy turned to him.

"Yeah, there's one out a half-mile from where Harmony's lair used to be. Used to go wandering a bit at night. Good way to avoid the pillow talk, if you know what I mean."

"Pillow talk?" Cordy's ears perked up at this. "You? And Harmony? May I take this opportunity to say Eww'?"

"Didn't notice her complaining any, blondie," Spike snapped back.

"So," Cordy said. "You're the boyfriend she was talking about. The one who was so devoted to her that he smothered her." Her voice trailed off as she noticed six faces staring at her, eyebrows raised.

"You mean, she was lying to me? About boyfriend stuff? Now that's evil!"

"I told you, Cordy. She's a vampire. They betray your trust. That's what they do." Angel glared at Spike to make his point.

Buffy closed her eyes in frustration as Willow came up to her and patted her shoulder.

"I guess this wasn't such a good idea, then, huh?" she said.

"We'll live," Buffy said. Xander came out with the aspirin and a glass of water, which Cordy gratefully accepted.

"There's not much time," Cordy said. "We have to find these demons and stop them before they finish that ritual. I have a feeling that killing humans comes after the chanty part"

"Spike, you'll have to show me where the cave is. I'm not familiar with that area," Buffy ordered. He nodded.

"Cordy and I are coming too," Angel said. Buffy opened her mouth to argue, but Angel interrupted her. "We do this all the time. You need our experience. Besides, Cordy will know whether it's the right cave."

Buffy closed her mouth and nodded. 

"You might also want to know about the ritual," Cordy said. "I remember a few of the words: Lucem annihila, tenebras fer. Noctis entes clamant ad deam. Hanc hostiam damus."

Willow quickly translated: "Nullify the light, bring the dark. The creatures of the night call upon the goddess. We offer this sacrifice." She sighed. "Sounds like you'd better get there before their little phone call to the dark side works."

**

It had been a stressful and mainly silent car ride out to the caves. Buffy sat in front with Spike. Cordy had made it clear she was not going anywhere near the vampire when she pointedly stood by the back door of the DeSoto, and Buffy figured if she let Angel sit in the front with Spike, they might not make it to the site of the demon ritual in one piece.

Spike parked far enough away so that the car would not be heard, and they walked the rest of the way in silence, carrying axes and crossbows. As they approached the caves, Cordy's eyes lit up in recognition.

"That's it!" she whispered. As they neared the cave opening, they could see a clearing where six demons stood in a ring holding torches and two women were huddled at the center of the circle.

"Do we even know what kind of demons these are?" Spike muttered. 

"I'm guessing big scaly ones with bad teeth," Cordy said. "In other words, the usual."

"We'll do what damage we can and save those women," Angel said. Spike rolled his eyes. 

"Six of them, four of us." Buffy said.

"Three — I'll do crossbow duty, but I don't do hand-to-hand combat if I can help it," Cordy intervened.

Buffy started again. "Six of them, three of us. Those are pretty good odds, don't you think?"

"If we use the crossbows first, we can take out two of them, then deal with the others," Angel said. 

"Sounds like a plan. Okay, everyone. On my signal, we " Buffy stopped. Spike had begun striding towards the demon circle, duster billowing behind. With a shout, he vaulted into the clearing and swung his axe, beheading one of the demons. 

"Damn it, Spike!" she ran after him, furious. Angel and Cordy aimed the crossbows and let the arrows fly, but Spike's early entrance had alerted the demons, and both arrows missed in the ensuing chaos.

"Re-draw, Cordy, and see if you can get another shot!" Angel said as he followed Buffy into battle. 

Spike was fighting two demons, his eyes smoldering with bloodlust. While he kept them both at bay, Buffy managed to knock one demon unconscious, but was well matched by the other, who seemed to be the leader. She heard Cordy call out, "Buffy, down!" so she ducked, then heard the whirr of an arrow as it found its target. Pushing the impaled and dying demon to the ground, she moved over to help out Spike, who had killed one demon and was dancing around the other. 

"These guys aren't so tough," Spike said brashly to Buffy, who'd come up behind him. While his head was turned, the demon grabbed a branch from the ground and with a deft movement swung it at Spike's head, knocking him backwards into a tree. Spike's head hit with a loud thud, and he fell unconscious to the ground. 

"Thanks for saving me the trouble of knocking him silly," Buffy said, "but you really shouldn't have." She swung her axe and decapitated the demon then turned to see what Angel was doing. 

Angel had killed his demon and was now untying the captured women. One of the women squeaked in fear, and he looked up to see the previously unconscious demon bearing down on Buffy. With preternatural speed, he pushed Buffy to the ground, rolling to his feet with an axe in his hand, and letting the blade fly through the air so it struck the demon right between the eyes. 

Buffy looked up from the ground. "Thanks," she said. 

"My pleasure," Angel smiled down at her, holding out his hand to help her up.

The two women had found their way to Cordy, who was reassuring them that the demons were dead and that they would be okay

The sound of a groan caught their attention. Buffy marched over to the tree where Spike was regaining consciousness. 

"What the hell were you thinking?" Buffy asked coldly. 

"Was thinking it was time to stop yammering and start killing," Spike growled back at her. "Didn't think there was a lot of time to sit around drawing diagrams." He lifted himself to his feet gingerly. 

"That was a dumb move," Angel said, coming up behind Buffy. "You could have " 

"Not again, you two. Spike, drive these women back into town and take them to the hospital if they want to go," Buffy ordered. 

Angel looked at her, aghast. "Buffy, you can't let these women go with him. Who knows what he could do to them?"  
  
Buffy sighed. "Cordy's going with him. Here, Cordy." She flipped her a stake, which Cordy neatly caught. "If he annoys you, stake him."

"His fashion sense annoys me," Cordy said. "I mean, hello, leather is so last year. I don't suppose I can stake him now and put us all out of our misery?"

Spike's expressive face was registering his disgust with this whole turn of events. 

Buffy walked up to him and touched his arm gently. "Please, Spike. No argument?"

Angel watched in alarm as the bristling vampire turned into a pussycat at Buffy's touch. Spike's face softened, and he looked over at the women. 

"Car pool's leaving soon, kiddies. Hop in now, or you're walking back to Sunnyhell," he said, and he turned and strode away in the direction of the car, picking up a few axes on the way. Confused, the two women followed. 

Cordy paused and looked at Angel and Buffy.

"I guess you two will walk back to town and spare us the usual angsty Poor Us conversation, huh?" Neither spoke. "Yeah, guess so." 

Cordy picked up the crossbows and followed Spike and the women. 

"How long has he been hanging around Sunnydale?" Angel asked. 

Buffy shrugged. "Almost two years now."

They started walking back through the woods. 

"He's bad news, Buffy," Angel said.   


Buffy stopped. "You think I don't know about Spike? He tried to kill me how many times? Back off, and let me handle him." She walked away again, her gait revealing her heightened emotions.

"You think he's changed," Angel said, walking faster to catch up

"I know he has," Buffy countered. "You you don't know about a lot of stuff."

He reached out his arm and stopped her, turning her to him as she avoided his intent gaze. He thought about how Spike was acting, and realization dawned. 

"He thinks he's in love with you." Angel spat out the words as if they were clotted blood.

Buffy nodded, her face averted.

"What is going on here?" Angel was raising his voice. "Why are you acting so calm about this? Doesn't it turn your stomach? It's unnatural!"

"A vampire falling in love with a Slayer? Yeah, that's one I never heard before," Buffy said wryly.

"We're different! I have a soul. He doesn't. He can't love, Buffy," Angel said, incredulous. "What he feels is sick, some sort of sociopathic obsession. It's not like what I feel for you."

"No, it's not." A look of pain crossed her face. "I never said it was. It's different. And it's between me and Spike, not you or anyone else."

"Buffy, what's happened to you?" Angel asked. "I can't believe you would allow him into your life, on any level."  
  
Buffy's head snapped up.

"You're right, Angel. Something did happen to me. I'm not the same. I died–remember? I got a new life. A clean slate." She stepped closer to him. "I **wanted** to die. I was so tired of life. It had treated me so badly. I'd lost you, I'd lost my mother, I was faced with losing Dawn. I felt so alone. And so I jumped. I died." 

She sighed and looked down. "And then I was miserable after I came back. I looked at it as going back to my old life, the old pain, the old loneliness. But I was wrong." She raised her face to his. "I was given a second chance, a rebirth–for a reason. I can't live in the past any more, wishing for what might have been. Alone because I'm holding on to the past. I wasn't meant to be alone in this. And I'm not better off alone."

"Buffy, you're not alone," Angel began.

"No, I'm not. But I was, Angel," she said. "You left me alone, to deal with all of this, the slaying, the apocalypses, the deaths. And when I asked you if you could stay forever, I I meant it. And you left anyway."

Angel reached out his hand and lifted her face up to his. "Buffy, I had no idea you felt that way. I'm I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Buffy gave him a small, sad smile. "I thought — I guess I thought I was supposed to be alone. That to be a Slayer meant I had to give up love. And that was why it was impossible for us to be together." She took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. "But I don't think that any more. I think I have to find a way to love **and** to be the Slayer. I think that's why the Powers That Be sent me back, so I can find out how to do this, how to balance the two sides of myself, the side that loves and the side that kills. And I can't love you any more–or, I can't love you the same way. The way that cuts me off from anyone else since I can't have you. My spirit guide told me that I need to risk the pain. I don't think she meant that I should shut myself off from the world because I can't have you."

She tilted her head to look at him. "You don't think she meant we should get back together, do you?"  
  
In his eyes, fear and horror warred with hope–and won. He wouldn't take the risk.

"I thought not," she said softly. "Angel, you have people who love you, people you can love. I saw how you were with Cordy–of all people! You care about each other. You have a great life. I don't hate you for having that."

She spoke slowly, deliberately, as if she were hearing these ideas for the first time–and perhaps she was. "I have people who love me, too. And I'm not going to turn away from them–any of them–because I'm sad I couldn't have you. I'm going to accept their love, and hope maybe things will be different this time. " 

"You seem so different, so "

"Mature? I've grown up, Angel. Having Dawn in my life–it's changed me. I love her more than anyone–even you. And when I died, it was because I didn't want to live any more in a world where I had to make choices between loving and killing, being Buffy and being the Slayer. And I think the Powers sent me back so I could do both."

"Buffy, I will always love you."  


"Angel, I will always love you too. But for the first time since I've loved you, I think I can love other people too." She put a hand up to his cheek. "This thing with Spike--him loving me--I'm not sure what it means. But I do know that I can't just pretend it's not real. Spike and I will figure out what it means eventually."

After driving home the two women, who said they didn't need medical attention, Cordelia insisted that Spike take her to the Bronze to revisit the past. 

They sat at a table near the dance floor, Cordy perched on a stool as far from Spike as possible while still sitting at the same table. 

"This place has really changed," she marvelled. 

"Redecorated it after the troll incident," Spike said, raising his beer to his lips. "Say, you want to order some wings? I'm feeling peckish after all that demon-killing."  


Cordy raised her eyebrows at him. "Since when does lying on the ground unconscious count as demon-killing?"

"At least I was in the thick of it for a while. Who was in the background fretting about chipping her nailpolish?"  


"I paid good money for this manicure, and besides, I'm Vision Girl, and I get the pain **before** the actual demon attack." Losing interest, she continued to look around.

"I can't believe I used to think this place was cool. There are much, much better places in LA. I know this great karaoke place–you'd like it, Spike. It caters to Evil Dead people like you."

"Dancing on the dark side, Cordelia? Didn't know you had it in you. I mean, you dated Harris, for crying out loud."

"I'll have you know, you peroxide-brained bloodsucking .. thing, that I once loved a noble warrior, the Grooselug! And he loved me!"

"The Groose-wha? What's that, some professional wrestling type from the WWF Smackdown?"

Cordelia didn't have a chance to answer because Angel and Buffy came up to the table. 

"I can see you two are getting along splendidly," Buffy said. Spike eyed her and Angel warily. "You two have a nice walk?" he said acidly. Buffy shot him a look, and he retreated into his beer again. 

"Thanks for letting Willow know where you were, Cordelia" Angel said, pointedly ignoring Spike. "I picked up the car at Buffy's. We can leave for LA from here. If we head out soon, we'll make it back before sunrise."

"Soon isn't soon enough for me," Cordy said. "Let's go." She picked up her purse and stood. "Bye Buffy. It's been the usual Hellmouthy fun. Give my best to Dawn and the others." She turned and left in a cloud of perfume.

Angel turned to Buffy. "Goodbye," he said. "Take care of yourself."

Spike averted his eyes. 

"Goodbye, Angel," Buffy replied softly. "I'll be seeing you."

Angel nodded, looked over at Spike once, then left. 

"Well, glad you two lovebirds patched things up" Spike said, suppressed pain in his voice. "Must be good to have Angel the Bloody Hero back again to fix everything."

Buffy sighed and sat down. 

"You got a chip on your shoulder to go along with the chip in your head?" she said. "Why do you let Angel bother you so much? He has nothing to do with you any more."

"He's still in your life, luv. That means he's still in mine." 

"He's not ," Buffy cut herself off and looked down at her hands. 

"He's not what?" Spike asked. "Not sticking around to clean up his bloody mess for the millionth time? What else is new?" He scowled into his beer.

Buffy's head snapped up. Unable to speak for a moment, she swallowed and took a deep breath.

"No, he's not in my life any more. He's my past–and a very important part of my past. But he's not part of my new life."

The scowl slowly disappeared as Spike took in that information, studying her face. They stared at each other a moment, her face unusually open and vulnerable to him. 

"You okay, luv?" he finally said. 

She smiled. "I'm fine. It's like I'm a whole new Buffy–Happy birthday to me."

Spike smiled too. "So," he said smoothly, "Can I buy the birthday girl a drink?"

"With what?" Buffy asked, skeptical.

Spike shrugged, reached into his pocket, and threw something on the table.

"Nicked Angel's wallet when he wasn't looking."

****

Stay tuned for Episode 4: The Mascot

   [1]: http://www.bloodyawfulpoet.com/
   [2]: http://people.ne.mediaone.net/shavorclan/)



	4. The Mascot

The Mascot

Dark Side of the Moon by Archivesgrrl and Cobweb

Episode 4: The Mascot

RATING: Overall PG-13. Some parts will have an NC-17 version posted to 

fanfiction.net and Of Muses and Minions. All episodes posted to BAPS 

will be PG-13.

SPOILERS: Through "The Gift." 

SUMMARY: This is an AU Season 6 fic. Each chapter is a self-contained 

"episode." We plan 22 "episodes."

ARCHIVE: BAPS (http://www.bloodyawfulpoet.com) and Of Muses and Minions 

(http://people.ne.mediaone.net/shavorclan/). Others with permission.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please! Send it to archivesgrrlandcobweb@yahoo.com 

DISCLAIMERS: All characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer belong to 

Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. 

THANKS: Larissa, for the awesome beta reading!

AUTHOR'S NOTES: No disrespect is meant to Kamapua'a or other Hawaiian deities. Dawn's hairstyle was inspired by Tiffany Shlain, _Good Morning America's_ Internet expert. For a great retelling of the legend of Kamapua'a, check out this site: http://www.coffeetimes.com/kamapuaa.htm

PREVIOUSLY in DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: After coming back from beyond to fulfill a prophecy, Buffy makes a fresh start in her life. 

Episode 4: The Mascot by Archivesgrrl/Jacque1in

It was early evening and Dawn was hanging out in the Magic Box while waiting for Buffy to finish an early patrol with Spike. She had already done her homework and was now making good use of her time among the magic shop goodies by exploring various corners of the store that were just out of Anya's line of sight. 

"Dawn!" Dawn started guiltily and lowered her hand so that it was hidden behind her body. "Have you seen the Hawaiian obsidian that was on top of the front display case? I can't find it." Anya sounded frustrated. 

"No, Anya, sorry. Maybe you sold it and forgot?" The obsidian was in Dawn's backpack, along with a handful of other spell ingredients. The tiny bottle of bindwort she clutched in her hand was about to join them.

"No, I certainly would remember selling it. I was planning on sending it back to where it came from, which is why it was out in the first place. Rocks from Hawaii are cursed! Even average people know that. Except for Giles, evidently, since he placed an order for sacred Hawaiian obsidian before he left!" Anya huffed in displeasure.

"I thought that was just a myth," Dawn said casually, tucking the bottle of bindwort into her pocket. 

"Oh, no, no! The Hawaiian gods are still very powerful and very cranky about bits of the island being carried off to who knows where." Anya frowned and continued to prowl the shop, examining all the shelves and table tops scrupulously. She was still searching when the bell over the door jingled, announcing a late customer. 

"Hi. Uh. Is Dawn Summers here?" 

Dawn peeked out from around the bookcase where she flipping through a book of love spells to see her friend Lyssa, a bit out of breath and her plum-tinted hair windblown. 

"Hey, Lyssa." Dawn greeted her friend casually, with a hint of a smile. She could hardly wait to tell her that she had snagged all the ingredients they would need for the spell. 

"Can I talk to you for a sec?" Lyssa pulled her off to the back of the shop, far from Anya. "We've got a problem," Lyssa hissed. "Mark won't drive for us the night we, uh, do the thing," Lyssa said. "He's got some stupid date. He said he'll give us _all_ a lift on Homecoming night, but that's it. I already checked with Michael and Todd and they don't know anyone else with a license and a car either. Not who would drive us with our, uh, _friend_, anyhow. So I guess we're screwed."

Dawn's face fell. Although she had been a bit nervous when her new friends had suggested the plan to disrupt the Homecoming dance, she had started to look forward to the prospective chaos their prank would bring, particularly the spell casting. Especially since she had an idea about how to tweak the spell just a teeny bit in order to make the whole night just that much more difficult for Kirstie Branson, her arch-nemesis from junior high. 

Before Dawn could respond, the front door bell tinkled again. "Nooooo, it was NOT an Ichythus demon. Its wings were all the wrong shape. And it was night. Ichythus demons are only active in daylight, so how would _you_ have ever seen one anyhow?" It sounded like Buffy and Spike were having another one of their evening bickers after patrolling. 

"I'm telling you I know what I saw. And that was definitely a sodding – Oh, evening, Anya. Allo, Nibblet. Nibblet's friend." Spike cut off his profane demon analysis when he saw the strange girl standing next to Dawn. His eyes skimmed her purple hair and then fixed on Dawn's hair. Spike stared. She had parted it into multiple segments, then braided and coiled it into tight little knots all over her head. It made her look like she was being prepped for one of those tests that required little electrodes all over her head. "New do, Nibblet?" 

Buffy snorted. "I call it the Pippi Longstocking look. Who's your friend?" Buffy was staring at Lyssa, taking in the purple hair and matching makeup, wondering if this explained the slight changes in Dawn's choice of clothes and hairstyle lately. Her sister's face had also looked suspiciously well scrubbed each day when she came home from school, as if she were removing heavier makeup before coming home. 

"Buffy, this is Lyssa. Lyssa, my sister Buffy and her, uh, friend. Spike. " Dawn hesitated, never having had to introduce a vampire to one of her school friends before. Hopefully Lyssa wouldn't notice anything unusual about him. Evidently, Dawn had no need to worry, as a glance at Lyssa revealed she had undergone some kind of miraculous transformation since Spike entered the store. Her body language had shifted almost imperceptibly, but Dawn recognized it right away. Lyssa seemed to be channeling school social queen Kirstie in full flirt mode. Her hips had subtly shifted to a more out-thrust position, she had straightened up to throw out her breasts more prominently, and her head had tilted in a provocative way. Dawn smirked. She should have figured that Spike would be Lyssa's type, even though he was obviously _way_ too old for her. Or maybe that was the attraction. That and the Billy Idol thing.

The subtle shift in atmosphere hadn't escaped Buffy either. Her eyes narrowed as she studied the Goth girl. Wasn't she a bit young to have the hots for Spike? Okay, so she was probably the same age Buffy had been when she'd met Angel. But that was different -- even if Angel was actually older than Spike. Buffy frowned.

"Spike. Cool name. Why did you pick it? 'Cuz, I'm sure your parents didn't name you that." Lyssa stepped forward towards Spike, taking hold of one of her numerous necklaces and fondling its crescent-moon-shaped charm. The movement managed to push her breasts together, drawing attention to her already generous cleavage. 

"Well, I picked it because I used to – Ow! Could ya watch the nasty little heels, Slay—Buffy? Those are my feet you're trodding on." Spike grunted irritably as Buffy's booted heel "slipped" and ground sharply into his instep. 

"Sorry, Spike, I just lost my balance." Buffy shot Spike a look that clearly said, "Do you _really_ want to tell her how you got your name?"

Lyssa looked at Buffy oddly but then dismissed whatever weird vibe was going on between Dawn's sister and the cute blond and continued. "I took my name from one of the dark goddesses: Lyssa, who used to drive her hell hounds through the underworld, prompting the Maenads to their fury." Lyssa's eyes glinted as if she relished the idea of the Maenads ripping apart their victims. 

"Maenads, eh? Wild women, full of bloodlust. My kind of girls." Spike nodded knowingly and grinned at the teen. "Well, except for the whole hatin' men thing." 

"Well, I don't hate men," Lyssa purred. "I'm just into strong female archetypes, which is why I worship the Goddess."

"Personally, I'm not that big on goddesses," Buffy interrupted dryly. "Especially dark ones. So, Dawn, are you ready to go home? Lyssa, do you live far? You shouldn't be walking alone after dark. We can walk you home if you want." Or maybe we can just let you walk out and see how far you get before some vamp less leashed than Spike mistakes you for a tasty cotton candy treat with that hair, Buffy thought grumpily_. _She forced an exaggerated smile at the younger girl and reminded herself of her Slayer duty to protect humans, even when they eyed Spike like a chocoholic spotting a piece of rich Godiva.

Anya had finished her search of the cabinet tops and came over to the group, her face still reflecting frustration. "Buffy, before you go, did you see the Hawaiian obsidian I had out earlier today? Big, black, shiny rock, sitting on the front counter?"

"Why, think somebody nicked it?" Spike smirked a bit as he snatched playfully at a crystal lying on the counter and picked it up as if to pocket it. Buffy's annoyed look and a slap on the hand made him put it back. 

"I'm beginning to think so, yes! And it could be dangerous in the wrong hands!" Anya frowned as if to emphasize the importance of what she was saying despite Spike's light mood.

"Nibblet, you have it stuffed in your tote? You been pilfering the goods?" Spike waggled his eyebrows at Dawn and reached for her backpack as her heart stopped beating. 

"No," she squeaked, trying to look offended.

"Tch, thought as much. Too much like your big sis, little bit," Spike grumbled, teasing, but withdrawing his hand, much to Dawn's relief. "When _I_ was a lad, we knew how to – Ow!"

Buffy had taken Spike's duster-clad arm and given it a firm, Slayer-strength pinch. "If you've finished corrupting the minors, Spike, maybe we could get a move on? Anya, I hope you find the Hawaiian whatchajiggy." 

"Well, if I don't, I don't envy the person who has it. It's bad, bad luck," Anya said, finally resigning herself to the stone's absence. "Oh, well, at least it seems to be out of my store! So I guess it's not my problem any more." She brightened and went back to the cash register to finish closing up the shop. "Night, guys." 

Dawn breathed a sigh of relief and tucked her backpack safely against her body as she and Lyssa followed Spike and Buffy out into the autumn dark. She hoped Anya was wrong. 

****

"So, did you spend the summer teaching my sister how to shoplift and other useful juvenile delinquent skills?" Buffy hissed at Spike after they had let the younger girls get a bit further ahead of them on the walk home, safely out of easy hearing range but still within sight.

"Oh, please!" Spike rolled his eyes. "I haven't done anything of the sort since – well, since June at least." Buffy gritted her teeth. "And I never do anything except that I'm trying to keep her out of trouble. Honestly, Buffy." 

"Well, don't encourage her. It's bad enough she's going all wiggy with the hair and the purple friend and – and I think she's been wearing heavy makeup at school!" 

"Ooooh, now there's a crime we better put a stop to," Spike mocked. "Next thing you know, she's going to be running drugs to Colombia because she's discovered eye liner." He rolled his eyes. "She's fifteen, Buffy! This is all normal stuff for girls her age. It's nothing to worry about. Dawn's a good kid." 

"Yeah, but I'm not so sure her friends are," Buffy said darkly. 

"Oh, come on, Buffy. You can't be put off by her mate? Girl's just got a bit of 

creative style to her is all. Nothing wrong with that."

Buffy snorted. "Oh, as if you're Mr. Objective after the way she was looking you over. Like you were some kind of – of dateable guy." 

"Hey!" Spike looked offended. "I happen to be very dateable! Just because you're not willing to give me a go doesn't mean there aren't other females who wouldn't be willing to sit and socialize and perhaps have a snog or two. Not fifteen-year-olds, of course," he added quickly as Buffy shot him a look. "But other women. Grown-up women. I'm not Peaches," he muttered. 

Buffy had the grace to look a bit embarrassed at that.

"You know, you should just be glad Dawn has friends," Spike finally said. He lowered his voice to a gravelly rumble. "She was too isolated this past summer, Slayer. Spending all her time with your Watcher and the other Scoobies, to say nothing of me." He snorted. "I don't care who she pals around with so long as she is hanging out with some kids her own age like a normal teen. Friends keep you connected with life. You know that. She needs her _own_ friends." 

Buffy looked at Spike, taking in the genuine concern in his face, and sighed. "Yeah, I know. But does she have to hang with a girl who has purple hair who named herself after a dark goddess? I think someone like that could be a bad influence." 

Spike chuckled. "At least Little Bit hasn't really discovered boys yet. That's where your _real _bad influences are going to start." He narrowed his eyes and nodded knowingly. "Yeah, I'll be keeping an eye on her when the whelps start coming around. Make sure they're good enough. Wouldn't want to have to kill 'em." 

"Uh, Spike. Please tell me you don't mean that literally?" Buffy raised an eyebrow. 

"What do you think?" Spike grunted in return. 

****

"So, is Spike your sister's boyfriend?" Lyssa asked.  
  
"Uh, no. Although he's totally in love with her," Dawn replied, glancing back to see if it was likely Buffy and Spike could hear them. 

Lyssa's face fell. 

"But she gave him the 'let's just be friends' talk, so they're not a couple or anything," Dawn continued. 

Lyssa brightened up again. "So, how old is he?"

Dawn considered. "I don't know. I think he lies about his age. Um. Twenty-six or so?" Just add a hundred years or so to that, she thought to herself. "Way too old for you in any case," she said pointedly, noticing how Lyssa's eyes took on a predatory glint. 

"He's really cool," Lyssa finally said, glancing back. "The cool hair, the neat leather jacket. And he's funny and seems kind of ... bad." Lyssa said the last word as if it were the most attractive quality.

"Well, not _bad_, not really," Dawn insisted. "My sister wouldn't let me hang out with him if he were really bad." Not half as bad as I've been lately, she thought. 

"He looks like he works out," Lyssa said with a little giggle.

"Well, he does a lot of uh, kickboxing, and walking around town and stuff. I mean, he has a car, this funky old classic DeSoto that is like _totally _ancient -- " Dawn paused, suddenly struck by what she was saying. Hmmm.

"Hey, Lyssa." Dawn glanced back at Buffy and Spike, who were giving one another dirty looks, which indicated they were having another one of their 'friendly discussions.' "I just had an idea about our little problem for Homecoming. It may not work, though..."

Lyssa listened to Dawn's idea and began to grin.

****

"You want me to do what?" Spike looked at Dawn the next afternoon in his crypt, aghast. "I am not about to help a bunch of teenyboppers snatch a sodding pig from their high school, much less let the thing ride in my car. It's a classic and I won't be having pig smell all over the interior." 

"Oh, like it could smell worse? Come on, Spike," Dawn wheedled. "It would only be in your car for, like, 10 minutes. Just long enough for us to get it out of the school and to the place we're going to stash it until Homecoming. And you don't even have to help us take it back. That's all covered." 

Spike rolled his eyes. "Dawn, the length of time isn't the point. It's the – the indignity of the thing. Big Bads do not participate in high school pranks." 

"Big Bads don't offer to protect the Slayer's little sister in perpetuity, either. So, what, you're going to let me go and break into the school on my own? 'Cuz, you know, we're going to do it at night. Without any adults around. And it _is_ trespassing on school property. And we're stealing an item worth more than $100, so it's like grand theft or something. You're going to let me go do that without watching over me to make sure I don't get into trouble?" 

Spike spoke through clenched teeth. "You're taking advantage of me, Nibblet." 

Dawn smirked. "Hey, I'm just being realistic. You _know_ I'll do it with or without your help. So, are you in or are you out?"

"Bloody hell." Spike sighed. He knew she would do it. If he helped out in the caper, Buffy would be pissed. On the other hand, if he didn't stay close to the Nibblet and Buffy found out later that he'd known and still hadn't succeeded in stopping her, she'd probably be more furious. And something _could_ happen to Dawn without him there to watch over her. "Either way, Buffy is going to want to kick my ass, isn't she?"

"Only if she finds out, and she is less likely to find out if we have your help. Oh, come on, Spike. Don't be so glum. It's for a good cause." Dawn grinned as she sensed Spike's resolve weakening. "All we want to do is embarrass the in-crowd and create a little harmless chaos. That's not so bad, is it? I'll bet you did this kind of stuff all the time when you were my age." 

"Oh, please, I – oh, bugger it." Spike was about to deny that he had done any thing of the sort when he realized that he had implied the exact opposite to Dawn and her mate just the day before in the Magic Box. If he contradicted himself now, Dawn would know he had lied. That and the unpleasant subject of what he had really been like as an adolescent William might come up. Sod it all. 

"Besides, I kind of thought you would get this." Dawn suddenly sounded serious. "I'm never going to be part of the inside social circle, Spike. I'm too much of a freak. So I might as well embrace my freakiness and go with it. And have some fun. It's not like we're going to hurt anyone. Can you understand?"

Spike looked at Dawn's solemn face, her hair bunched up in its new little coils, her face still tarted up with the heavy eye-shadow and lipstick she hadn't yet washed off before heading back to the house. She looked like she wanted to look older and harder than she was, he realized. Stronger. And she trusted him to see her this way, when she wasn't yet ready to let Buffy see it.

"Yeah, Nibblet." Spike sighed. "I understand." Better than you know, he thought. "But you still better be sure that pig doesn't do anything nasty in my car. Or I'll eat the sodding thing, chip or no chip." 

"Funny. That's what happened to the last Sunnydale mascot." Dawn smirked.

****

They snatched the pig with relative ease, although there was a brief, tense moment when Spike met Dawn, Lyssa, and the two boys who were helping with the prank at the high school parking lot after dark. Spike paused to check out Michael and Todd, taking particular note of Michael's pierced eyebrow and black nail polish, and Todd's pierced tongue and long hair. He muttered something about "wannabes" before asking them tersely if they had a plan to get the pig out to the car without getting caught. 

"Because if anything happens to Dawn while you're in that building, it won't be the school authorities or the cops you have to worry about," he growled at the two boys, who were rather in awe of his hair, the leather duster and his scuffed, well-worn boots. "It will be me. I will rip every pierced item from your bodies one by one, without undoing the fastenings. Got it?" 

Lyssa looked somewhere between titillated and horrified at the threat, while Dawn flushed a miserable pink and shot Spike a dirty look. If she'd known he was going to embarrass her like this, she wouldn't have asked him to drive them in his stinky old car. 

Spike sat in the DeSoto, keeping an eye out for the authorities while having a cigarette and waiting for the kids to bring back the pig. A car drove by the school a bit more slowly than he liked, but it didn't stop and he assumed the driver had missed the shadow of his classic car in the dark. 

Finally, the teens came tearing out of the building, half-carrying, half-dragging the pig by a leash they'd secured around its neck. The boys stuffed it unceremoniously into the back seat of the DeSoto and tumbled in behind it, panting, as Dawn and Lyssa scrambled into the front seat. Spike flicked his cigarette out the window and the get-away car took off into the night, tires and pig squealing.

Fifteen minutes later, pig safely ensconced in a roomy garden shed at Lyssa's surprisingly palatial home, Spike whisked Dawn home and thought no more about it. Nibblet was safe and still able to have her bit of teenaged fun without Buffy any the wiser. He went back to his crypt, kicked his feet up on the red and black footstool, tuned in for a bit of late-night telly and relaxed with a smoke before falling into a peaceful, guilt-free nap. 

****

Lyssa and Dawn knelt in the shadow of the garden shed, the combined scents of coconut, flowers, and pig coiling like a thick treacle around them. Razor, the Sunnydale Razorbacks' mascot who had begun the ritual lying lackadaisically in the center of a sacred circle, was now standing stiffly in that center, the air around it pulsating with green flickers of energy. Around its neck hung a garland of flowers, a magical "leash" to keep its newly invoked power at bay until the appointed time. Dawn, shivering in the ever-increasing chill of the circle, began the final stage of the spell. 

"Kamapua'a, kapua 'i,

We offer you a maiden

To pursue as you did Pele

In your great passion for her

May your desire for her burn

As bright as the sacred fire."

Dawn struck a match and lit the picture of Kirstie that she had torn out of the school newspaper before tossing it quickly into a waiting receptacle in the center of the circle, where it sparked and suddenly flamed high before guttering to ash. The ambient green light seemed to flare brightly in sync with the flame before softening again. Lyssa bowed her head and then raised the obsidian that Dawn had "liberated" from the Magic Box earlier that week towards the ceiling, dragging a swirl of green color with it through the air like a stream of fireflies, and began the final words of the spell to seal the invocation.

"Kamapua'a, kapua 'i,

E komo mai!" 

With a sudden, passionate motion, Lyssa struck the rock against the floor. The sharp sound reverberated and made the green-lit air shiver and rush out from the epicenter of the rock and then retract on itself like an ocean wave.

"E komo mai!"

Crack! The green wave of energy blew out past Dawn's cheeks, wider than the previous ring, and then rushed back to the rock with a whooshing noise, tugging at Dawn's hair on the return trip.

"E komo mai!"

With the third crack of the obsidian against the floor, the crackling energy exploded into a whirl of light and sound that bounced around the room like a laser show, only to vanish with a final clap like thunder, leaving the two girls disoriented by the relative darkness of the shed. The air around them had the pungent smell of ozone now overlaying the other scents, and Lyssa's hair stood up all over, making it look like a purple clover. 

As their eyes adjusted, Dawn and Lyssa peered into the dark at Razor, who stood quietly in the middle of the circle, huffing softly. He looked normal, Dawn thought, except for the funny green light that occasionally flickered in his suddenly intelligent eyes. And then Razor smiled at her. 

****

The doorbell rang and Dawn hurried to open it. "Buffy, that must be my ride, I'll see you later tonight, okay?" She grabbed her jacket on the way out the door.

"Your ride? You mean you're not walking?" Buffy came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "Who's driving? I didn't think any of your friends were old enough to drive." She frowned. 

"Lyssa's brother is taking us." 

"Lyssa has a brother old enough to drive?" Buffy raised an eyebrow, picturing a male, taller version of Lyssa, perhaps with green hair for variety's sake, just as Dawn threw the front door open. 

The hair was not green but blond. Not as platinum as Spike's, not quite, but still obviously bleached. Lyssa's bleached-blond brother was dressed in black, and had a pierced ear and a killer smile. "Although probably not in the literal sense," thought Buffy, blinking. 

"Hi," said the blond, holding out his hand. "I'm Mark, Melissa's- Lyssa's brother." Buffy stared at his lovely mouth and then down at his nicely shaped hand. 

Buffy introduced herself as Lyssa rolled her heavily made-up eyes at Dawn and mouthed silently, "He's between girlfriends." 

"So, Buffy, you're not going to Sunnydale's Homecoming? Not interested in revisiting old memories, eh? Not that I would know what Sunnydale High memories are like since we didn't move here until I was in college at UCS." Mark smiled at Buffy. She couldn't avoid noticing that even his teeth were gorgeous. 

"Nah, a friend is coming over and we were just going to watch movies. Leave the good time memories alone and let Dawn have the fun of watching the team get beaten in fine Sunnydale Homecoming game tradition." 

His laugh was kind of attractive, too. Buffy smiled back at him. "Look at me," she thought. "I'm reborn, flirtatious girl."

"Mark, we should go." Lyssa sounded surprisingly excited about going to the game and dance, neither of which Buffy had assumed would be Lyssa's idea of a good time. 

"Little sisters, no patience at all," Mark muttered, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at Buffy. "Nice to have met you, Buffy. Maybe I'll see you around." 

As Buffy closed the door behind them, she thought about high school football games, and dances, and cute boys. Thanks to slaying, she had never really had as much chance to enjoy those kinds of things the way she would have liked.

"I wonder if Willow would be up to doing some high school déjà vuinstead of watching movies?" she wondered out loud. "It would be kind of cool to see what a normal Homecoming – without an impending apocalypse – looks like."

****

The Sunnydale football player, ball clutched in his arms, fell into the end zone just as the horn signaled the end of the game. The Homecoming crowd went wild as the high school band burst into a rousing version of the fight song and the Sunnydale cheerleaders commenced a vigorous celebratory routine that involved a lot of high kicks and pom-pom shaking.

"See, now, why couldn't they have won like that when we were in school?" Willow grumbled, picking at the remains of her popcorn. "It's breaking tradition for the home team to win at Homecoming! You're supposed to lose and then go comfort yourself by hanging around at the dance with your friends and making fun of the Homecoming Court while secretly admiring the dresses." 

"Well, hey! We can still go scoff and admire! The school is allowing public access tonight to show off the new building," Buffy said, patting Willow's arm comfortingly. "I think they hope the taxpayers will feel all nostalgic about high school and not mind how many millions of tax dollars it cost to rebuild the school." 

"Some things never change," Willow sighed. "Let's go check out the new building. After what happened to ours, I'm kind of curious to see if the architects made any interesting design changes. You know, like building it like a war zone bunker or something." 

"Well, I did hear the motion-sensitive lights are pretty snazzy," Buffy said as the pair began to make their way down the bleachers. She paused partway down as she thought she felt her Slayer sense tingle, but then the sensation faded, and with a shrug, she followed Willow.

****

From his post beneath the bleachers, Spike listened to the reverberating tramp of feet overhead as he lit his cigarette. "Good, the sheep are off to the pen," he thought with satisfaction. "Should be show time pretty soon." His plan was to lurk about, make sure the prank came off as planned and that Dawn made a clean escape, then scamper off to the Bronze for a beer. But not until he was certain his Nibblet wasn't going to get herself – or him – into any trouble, at least not any they couldn't handle. 

When the crowds had dispersed ten minutes and a leisurely smoke later, he started into the school building. An hour tops, he speculated, and he'd be free to rest easy and enjoy his weekend in peace. Perhaps he'd have a Guinness. 

****

The dance was hot and crowded, but everyone seemed to be having a good time, including the few adult Sunnydale taxpayers who had been willing to brave the musical assault coming from within the gym rather than simply peeking in, covering their ears and scurrying away to look at the new library. 

"Will, do you see Dawn anywhere?" Buffy shouted over the music. Willow shook her head and Buffy frowned. She wasn't really checking up on her, but she had become a bit concerned that she still hadn't seen her. Could Dawn have lied to her about going to Homecoming?

A familiar tingle began in her gut and Buffy began to search the darkened gym more methodically. When her eye finally caught a familiar glint of platinum hair in one corner, she touched Willow's arm and shouted, "Be right back!" before starting towards her target.

Spike was lurking behind a table set with food and a punch bowl, helping himself to some sort of hors d'oeuvre. He was evidently preoccupied with selecting from the range of munchies because he failed to notice Buffy until she had nearly reached him. Even in the dark, she saw that he nearly choked on what he was chewing when he saw her, which seemed like suspicious behavior, even for Spike. 

"First college parties, now high school ones. Are you trying to embrace your arrested development, Spike?" Buffy raised an eyebrow. 

Spike cleared his throat nervously. "Uh, hello, Buffy. Thought you would be out doing patrolling or hanging out with the gang at the Bronze or something." He silently added, "And that Little Bit would have made sure of that before trying to pull a stunt under Big Sis's nose. Going to have to have a talk with that girl about planning capers properly." 

"Willow and I decided to relive our glory days for the night. You know: old school spirit, cheerleading, Homecoming-court viewing." Buffy paused. "Although, now that I mention it, none of those have particularly good associations for me." She grunted and looked at Spike. "What's your excuse?" 

"I was just –" He paused, trying to think of a plausible reason to be in the school besides his real purpose and found himself seizing on the first excuse that came to him. "I was just here to listen to the band," he finally said firmly. "Heard they were good." 

Buffy glanced over at the local band, a motley group of local college students playing a loud and enthusiastic but painfully out-of-tune cover of 'Tainted Love.' "Somehow, I never pictured you as a Soft Cell fan," Buffy said dryly. "Come on, Spike. It's Friday night and even _you_ could find something better to do than hang out with a bunch of teenagers listening to bad '80s music." Buffy crossed her arms and gave him a skeptical look. 

"Oh, right." Spike took the offensive. "Sure you're not looking for another high school to destroy? This would make, what, three?"

"Oh, please, I was kind of saving the world as we know it at the time –" Buffy began to point out, only to be cut off by shrill electronic feedback from a microphone. The band had wound up its number and the podium spotlight was now on Principal Gregory, the so-far-still-uneaten successor to Principal Snyder. 

"Welcome, everyone, particularly our special open house guests, to the 2001 Sunnydale High School Homecoming dance! As you know, this is our first year in the new building…" Buffy tuned out Principal Gregory's voice and turned back to Spike, who was taking advantage of the speech to slip some sort of pastry puff things into his duster pockets. 

"Jeez, Spike, what is it with you and food, anyhow? You eat more than any vampire I've ever known." Buffy watched as Spike popped what looked like a miniature spring roll into his mouth. 

"Mmmmph," Spike replied, before swallowing and then leaning over close to Buffy's ear. "Simple, luv," he murmured. "I'm orally fixated." He straightened as he used the tip of his tongue to brush away a crumb on his lip and grinned sardonically.

Buffy felt a small tingle of something she preferred not to analyze as she watched his tongue brush across his lip, but quickly suppressed it. "God, Spike, sometimes you really are a pig," she snorted.

For some reason, her comment made him laugh out loud, causing a few heads to turn their way. 

"Buffy, I still haven't seen Dawn. Wow, look at that dress!" Willow appeared behind Buffy, eyeing a particularly backless and low-cut shift on a girl who looked at least as young as Dawn. "I don't remember the dress code being that ... flimsy. Hi, Spike." Willow did a double take at Spike and then looked questioningly at Buffy.

"He's checking out the band," Buffy said sarcastically. "And stuffing his face." 

"Hey! It's a public event, and I'm a resident of Sunnyhell, too, ya know." Spike craned his neck to see what was happening on the stage, which was now crowded with a handful of giggling girls in fancy dress and boys in tuxes. Principal Gregory's voice boomed over the loudspeakers, announcing the members of this year's Homecoming Court amidst applause and cheering. "So that's the in-crowd, eh? Look a right bunch of prats." He grunted. 

"Hey, I'll have you know that _I _ran for Homecoming Queen one year," Buffy said, giving him a stern look. 

"Oh? Did you win?" Spike raised an eyebrow.

"Uh – no --"

"Oooh, Slayer, so not quite as "in" as all that, then?" Spike smirked. "Just as well, pet, wouldn't want you to be raising up Tidbit to think running with that lot was important. Better for her to be her own woman." 

"And you're what, Dr. Spike the adolescent psychology expert?" Buffy grumbled. 

"Speaking of Dawn, where _is_ she? We've been looking for her all night and haven't seen her anywhere," Willow said, peering around into the crowd.

"I'm sure she's around somewhere," Spike said nonchalantly. "Probably fixing her makeup in the loo with her mates or something." 

"Probably has that Lyssa chick helping her apply it with a trowel." Buffy said, pursing her lips.

"Now, now, Buffy, we've had this talk before – " Spike began, only to be interrupted by sudden pandemonium near the stage. "Bloody hell, here we go," he muttered.

Around the stage, people were squealing and running. Buffy couldn't see what started the ruckus at first, but then she spotted it: some distant cousin of the long-lamented Herbert, the last known Sunnydale Razorback mascot, was running frantically around on the gym floor, dashing between legs and under girls' skirts. Only this pig looked much larger and considerably meaner – and seemed to be glowing a strange, phosphorescent green. 

"Oooh! It must be a prank!" Willow squeaked. "What's with the glowing? Is that luminescent paint?"

The pig suddenly stopped in the middle of the dance floor and stood, looking around as if searching for something or someone particular. Spying one of the girls on the stage, a slim blonde in a shimmering pink dress, it suddenly roared and stood up on its back legs. Buffy grimaced, thinking the motion looked rather creepy – but it was nothing compared to the abrupt transformation that followed in a rush of green energy. When the flash of light vanished, a man stood in the middle of the gymnasium, clad only in a bright red cloth wrapped around his waist, skin covered in a dense pattern of black tattoos, and dark hair shorn like bristles all over his head. It wasn't until he turned to the crowd once more that people began to scream and run, as they saw his mottled pink snout and huge curved tusks jutting out of the skin. 

"I guess not." Spike answered Willow's question, staring numbly. 

****

The creature opened its mouth and then roared before charging directly for the blonde girl, who began to scream shrilly and tried to run in her fashionably thick-soled sandals. Stumbling off the edge of the stage, the girl landed in a crumpled heap, the crown so recently placed on her head askew and the ribbon reading "Sophomore Princess" beginning to entangle her arms. The pig-man, his short, thick muscles pumping, swept her up with an indecipherable but triumphant shout and slung her over his shoulder. As the girl's arms and legs flailed helplessly and she continued to shriek, he whirled, grunting, apparently looking for an escape. 

"Caveman much?" Buffy snorted before taking off at a run towards the couple. With a groan, Spike followed. 

The crowd was clearing in panic as the pig-man bolted for the door, bellowing, his captive in his arms. Attacking from the side, Buffy managed to jump up and catch him in the ribs with a whirling kick, jarring the girl loose from his grasp. Growling, the pig-man turned to face this new and annoying obstacle while the girl, makeup beginning to smear around her eyes, tried to scramble away. 

Dark eyes flashed green for a moment and the pig creature threw his arms up the air shouting in a language that Buffy didn't understand. Instantly, a thick gray cloud appeared near the ceiling of the gymnasium, blocking out what little light there had been from the subdued party lighting, and a drenching downpour of ice cold rain began to fall. Buffy stopped, caught off guard by the unexpected shower, and behind her she could hear Spike begin to swear a steady stream of curses. 

The pig creature shouted out another word in the unknown language and thrust his arm out towards Buffy. A brilliant flash of light combined with a concussive blow of what felt like a million volts of energy threw her several yards across the gymnasium, slamming her into the buffet table. She lay there for a moment dazed before raising her head dizzily and squinting through the indoor rain. The pig-man was trundling the girl up onto his shoulder again as wet and screaming people tried to run out of the room. The wires of the stage microphone system were sparking wildly as school officials and Homecoming Court members clambered over one another trying to escape the danger. 

Off to one side, Willow, eyes even darker than the pig creature's, threw up her hands and chanted something that made the pig creature suddenly stand frozen, unable to move, the girl dangling limply over his shoulder. The bizarre rain from overhead turned into drizzle and then stopped as the cloud evaporated. 

"Buffy, are you okay?" Buffy could see Spike's lips moving, but her ears were still ringing, muffling the sound. She vaguely noticed that something was very odd about Spike's hair, but other more pressing matters demanded her attention as she struggled to her feet and ran back towards the pig creature, who still stood, battling fruitlessly against Willow's magical bindings. 

"Will, how long will that hold?" Buffy panted, her own voice sounding distant and watery. 

"A few minutes at least. What IS that?" Willow looked anxious, despite her still ominously black eyes. 

"Not any demon I recognize," Spike said, squinting at the tusks and running a hand through his hair. He paused for a moment and pulled at the blond locks as if trying to see them. "Damn!" he muttered. "I must have been standing too close to the Slayer." He brushed at his hair in annoyance. 

"It's a demi-god," said a new voice. Lyssa sounded shaken. She and Dawn had entered the gymnasium during the fray and stood nearby, faces wet with rain and pale in the flickering lighting. 

"Dawn! Where have you been? Are you okay?" Buffy grabbed her sister by the arm and looked her over with concern. "Wait, what do you mean it's a demi-god?" Buffy stared at Dawn and Lyssa.

"It's Kamapua'a, the Hawaiian pig god," Dawn said.

"The water god who was in love with Pele, the volcano goddess?" asked Willow, her face brightening a bit. "Wow, he has a great myth!" As four faces turned to look at her, she added, blushing, "Well, it's very romantic and passionate. Although kind of sad, since Pele rejects him brutally when he tells her he loves her and they fight and try to kill one another with storms and lava." Raising her eyebrows as if making a connection, she added, "I guess that explains the inside waterworks. He can make thunderstorms." Looking at Buffy's hair she added, "And lightning," although Buffy failed to understand the implication.

Kamapua'a had stilled and now stood glaring at the group, the blonde now mercifully unconscious over his shoulder. Spike glanced overhead. "Uh, Buffy, Will, perhaps we can discuss Pig-boy's romantic nature at some later point. Looks like it's clouding up again. The binding spell must be weakening."

"Dawn, you're eventually going to have to explain to me how you know that thing is a demi-god, but first things first. We need to get the girl away from him. Will, can we just take her out of harm's way?" Buffy asked.

"No, the spell won't allow us to break that barrier. He'll have to give her up voluntarily," Willow said unhappily. 

Buffy swore. "Okay, so any ideas why he grabbed her to start with? Maybe we can convince him to hand her over." 

"He's in love," Dawn muttered. 

"What?" Buffy said as Spike and Willow raised their eyebrows.

"The girl is Kirstie Branson. He's in love with her. I kind of put a love spell on – on him to make him want her," Dawn admitted. "But he was just supposed to chase her around the gym! And he was supposed to still be a pig!" she tried to explain as the three adults cast perturbed looks at her. 

"Dawn, you were doing magic? Unsupervised?" Willow sounded appalled. "Don't you know how dangerous that is?" 

"It was just a little spell!" Dawn said, her brow wrinkled in worry. 

"Let's scold the Nibblet later," Spike said roughly. "I don't fancy getting any more soaked than I already am." He gestured at the ceiling, where the clouds were growing darker and thicker. Kamapua'a was beginning to shift more, as if he could feel the bindings loosening, and he was beginning to rumble something in what the group now assumed was Hawaiian. 

"Oh, great and it sounds like we have a language barrier, too. Unless you happen to speak Hawaiian as well as Fyarl?" Buffy looked at Spike hopefully.

"No such luck, pet, I don't know much more than 'Aloha,''' he replied. 

"Ooh! I have a spell we can use for translating!" Willow said eagerly. "Maybe if we just ask him nicely, he'll give her up!"

Willow chanted something quick and soft and made a motion with her hands and then suddenly the group could hear what the Hawaiian demi-god was saying in English. "Why do you insult me by offering me this maiden and then forbidding me to take her?" he roared. "How do mortals dare bind me in this manner after invoking me?" A flash of lightning suddenly flitted from one part of the dark cloud overhead to another and the air crackled. On the demi-god's shoulder, Kirstie suddenly stirred, looked at her captor, and began to scream again. Kamapua'a glanced at the girl and, much to everyone's surprise, began to speak to her coaxingly. "Hush, my beloved, I will soon have you away from all this. You will be my goddess and I will worship every inch of your golden sweetness." He nuzzled a tusk against her body gently and patted Kirstie's satin-clad posterior comfortingly.

Kirstie squealed and began to sob again. "Help me! Please help me! He's a pig!" She wailed and began to beat his bare and tattooed back. "You pig! Let me go! Let me go!" One kicking sandal nearly got Kamapua'a in what looked like a potential delicate area of his cloth-covered lower half, although it was hard to say with a pig-human hybrid.

As Kirstie continued to shout and kick, Kamapua'a flung his head back and roared toward the gym rafters, where the ceiling-bound cloud began to flicker with more electrical charges and a light sprinkle of rain began to fall. Shaking Kirstie, he bellowed, "Why must they always say that?" He roared again. 

"What's he griping about?" Buffy asked in bewilderment.

"Uh, I think he's upset because Kirstie called him a pig," Willow answered. She continued, lowering her voice confidentially, "The love of his life, the goddess Pele called him a pig when she rejected him. It's gotta be kind of a sore point." Willow looked at the railing demi-god almost pityingly. 

Spike snorted. "Hey, mate! You have my sympathies there," he shouted to the demi-god.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Okay, what about lifting the love spell? Maybe he'll let her go if he doesn't feel that love any more." 

"Just let her keep calling him a pig. That might take care of the feelings without any mojo," Spike grunted.

"I think I could do a reversal spell," Willow said cautiously. "Dawn, tell me exactly what you said when you worked the magic." 

Dawn and Lyssa filled in the witch in on the details of the love spell and Willow, after thinking for a moment, took their hands while she recited an antidote to the love spell as Kirstie continued to kick and squeal. The demi-god's upper body was moving much more freely now, although his legs still seemed to be mired in whatever invisible molasses Willow's magic had sunk him into. As Willow spoke, a bluish aura began to swirl around the pig god and his captive, until it suddenly whirled right into the area of what should have been Kamapua'a's heart if he had been human. He straightened suddenly, looking down at the blonde still sobbing and writhing on his shoulder, and then suddenly flung her away from him. 

"Begone from me, you pale and insipid creature!" Kamapua'a proclaimed with disgust. "You are nothing compared to my beloved Pele, she of the dark hair and the molten fire." 

Kirstie tumbled to the floor of the gym, scrambled to her feet and ran out of the room, which was now empty. 

Kamapua'a growled. "And when I am free, I shall be avenged on you, humans, for this humiliation. It does not befit a great warrior such as myself to have such paltry tricks played on him by children."

"Hey, who are you calling a child?" snarled Spike. "I'll have you know I'm nearly– " 

Spike's comment was cut short as a lightning bolt flashed from the ceiling to the electrical equipment on the stage and Kamapua'a finally broke free of Willow's waning magical bonds. With a tremendous bellow, the pig god launched himself at Buffy, trying to gore her with his tusks. With an equally full-throated roar, Spike threw himself into the battle as Willow pushed Dawn and Lyssa to a safer area and a torrent of rain began to pour down.

Slipping and sliding on the wet gymnasium floor, Buffy and Spike worked in sync, throwing punches and kicks, both staying as physically close to Kamapua'a as possible on the assumption that he would not dare direct a lightning strike too close to himself. Buffy managed to grab a metal hors d'oeuvre tray at one point, snapped it brutally in half, and was about to use it to decapitate the pig god when Willow squealed.

"No! Buffy, don't kill him! You'll kill the pig and it's an innocent creature!" 

The momentary distraction was enough for Kamapua'a to take the upper hand. Knocking Spike away on the slippery floor just in time for a lightning bolt to zap the vampire and knock him unconscious, Kamapua'a launched himself at Buffy and wrestled her to the ground. Buffy found herself pinned against the sodden floor, water streaming into her face and eyes from above, and bits and pieces of debris sticking her in the back. 

"For a human woman, you have a lot of fire!" Kamapua'a rumbled, his tusks brushing against her cheeks as he bent in close. Buffy could see that the dark eyes staring out above the snout were really rather pretty, which was disconcerting. She could see the arcs of lightning flashing behind the pig god's head and feel that the damp red cloth he wore was soaked through and providing an inadequate barrier between their bodies. "You have the passion of my beloved Pele," he said approvingly. The tusks nuzzled against her provocatively and Buffy realized with a sense of horror that the piggy little mouth was heading towards her own lips. She was just trying to decide if she dared open her mouth to scream or whether that would be considered an open invitation for demi-god tongue action when Kamapua'a's weight was suddenly lightened and she found a normal-sized pig resting on her chest, trembling and snuffling rather anxiously. At the moment Kamapua'a vanished, the storm clouds hovering near the ceiling and pelting the gym with rain disappeared. Buffy pushed the pig off of her and sat up, disoriented. 

"Not that I wanted to have porcine lip contact, but what happened?" she asked, looking around.

"We sent him back into the obsidian from whence we think he came," announced Willow proudly, holding up a slim and shiny black rock. "Dawn was carrying it around in her pocket and I figured out a way to stuff him back in. Although, Dawnie, didn't anyone ever tell you these things are bad luck? I'll have to make sure Anya sends it back to the islands pronto." 

Dawn ignored Willow and knelt down beside Spike, who was sitting up groggily, holding his head and using curse words that none of the young women in the room had ever heard. "Spike, are you okay?" Dawn asked anxiously. 

"Yeah," he groaned, wincing. "I think so. Although I imagine my hair is rivaling the Slayer's in the bride of Frankenstein department."

"What? What's wrong with my hair?" Buffy felt her head, where her hair was sticking up in tufts after the lightning strike she had taken early on. "I was fighting with electroshock hair and no one mentioned it?" 

"Didn't seem to make much difference to Kamapua'a," observed Willow. "He still looked like he wanted to put the moves on you." 

Spike frowned. "What'd I miss while I was knocked out?" 

"I'm all fiery," Buffy muttered. "What is it with men who groove on my beating them up?" 

"Well – " Spike began.

"Don't _even_ go there, Spike." Buffy shot him a warning look. "God, you can be such a pi— a jerk." 

She turned to Dawn, who was hovering as if waiting for an axe to fall. "Dawn, now that the immediate crisis is over, _what the hell were you thinking?_" 

"It was just supposed to be a joke, Buffy, that's all," Dawn began defensively. "No one was supposed to get really hurt or anything." Dawn looked apologetically at Spike, who was still wincing and rubbing his head. "The spell just went kind of wonky. Maybe if you let me actually _learn_ how to use magic properly, it wouldn't have happened." Dawn raised her chin defiantly.

"What, so you can destroy the whole school next time instead of just the gym?" Buffy snapped.

"Following in big sister's footsteps," Dawn snapped.

Willow interceded quickly, seeing the pained look on Buffy's face. "Buffy, she has a point. About the magic training, not the school-destroying," she added hastily. "If she's determined to try to use magic, she's better off properly instructed." Buffy glared back at her friend. "Well, of course, unless you don't _want_ her using any magic..." Willow backpedaled. 

"Will's right, Buffy," Spike interjected. "If Little Bit is going to want to do magic, she's going to do it whether you want her to or not. Better to have the Wiccas take her under their wing than let her be playing at being teen witch without any idea what she's doing." He missed Lyssa's hot blush at his words.

"Hello, still here," Dawn said, waving her hand. "Would you mind not discussing me like I'm invisible?" 

Buffy looked at everyone and sighed. "Okay, we'll talk about it, later. But for now, let's just go home. I think I've had enough high school déjà vufor the evening." Buffy held out a strand of her hair and examined it with a grimace. 

"Lyssa! Are you guys alright?" Mark appeared behind his sister and pulled her into a quick hug. "I heard the commotion but couldn't find you outside. What happened?" 

Spike frowned at the new arrival, taking in his bleached hair and black clothes. 

"Just another Sunnydale High School Homecoming," Buffy said dryly, looking around at the smoldering and water-soaked gym. 

"Yup. This is pretty much the way _I_ remember high school," Willow said nostalgically.

****

It wasn't until Dawn had stalked off into the house on Revello, put out at being grounded by Buffy for the next two weeks, that it came out.

"I don't understand why she did it," Buffy said to Spike, who was leaning against the front porch columns, running his fingers idly through his wild and frizzy hair. "What would possess her to do such a moronic thing? A prank? A _magical_ prank?" Buffy shook her head.

Spike sighed. "She's feeling out of the loop, I think. Usual teen alienation compounded by the whole mystical Key thing, to say nothing of losing her Mum and sis for a big part of the year. Hanging out with the Scoobies this summer – well, it had its uses, I can't deny it, but I suspect she felt more like a mascot than a real member of your little group. Scrappy to your Scooby, if you know what I mean." 

Buffy digested this silently, but then nodded in understanding. 

"I think she just wanted to fit in with somebody, somewhere." He shrugged. "Lyssa and her mates fit the bill." He grunted. "Speaking of which, I wonder where those two halfwit boys were during the escapades. Probably bolted as soon as they saw real trouble was afoot. They didn't look the courageous sort." He snorted.

"Boys? What boys?" Buffy sounded confused and Spike froze. "Spike, what do you know about this?" 

"Uh – " That lightning bolt must have scrambled his brains a bit, Spike thought. Usually he could think up a lie and think it up quick like the Grinch, but he was drawing a blank. 

"Spike, you _knew_ she was going to do this?" Buffy's voice sounded ominous.

"Oh, bloody hell," he muttered, feeling for a cigarette in his pocket. He was obviously going to need a smoke for what was coming. 

"I thought she'd be better off with me looking out for her," he said, lighting his cigarette and blowing the smoke out in a harsh puff of air. "She told me what she was up to and I thought she'd be better off with a bit of adult supervision." 

"You let my sister invoke a horny demi-god into a pig and destroy the new school gymnasium?" Buffy hissed in disbelief.

"Hey, now! She never mentioned the whole mojo thing to me! All she told me was that they were snatching the pig and turning it loose at the dance. That's all, I swear!" 

"Oh, so you just aided and abetted her in breaking and entering?" Buffy exhaled in frustrated disgust. 

"No, I just drove the bloody getaway car," Spike grumbled.

"You WHAT?" Buffy howled. "Spike, are you out of your mind? This is serious! You helped her commit a criminal act. _Multiple_ criminal acts, if you throw in the destruction of property and potentially life-threatening danger we were all in tonight. What the hell were _you_ thinking?"

"I was trying to protect Little Bit," he shouted back, growing angry himself. "For God's sake, Buffy, she's fifteen bloody years old. She is _going_ to do as she pleases whatever you or I tell her. At least she isn't shutting me out yet, so I still have a chance to make sure she doesn't do anything permanently harmful to herself." 

"Letting her do whatever stupid thing she wants to do is NOT protecting her, Spike!" Buffy snapped furiously. "You should have – have stopped her somehow!"

"Oh, bugger it," Spike snarled, flipping his half-smoked cigarette into the bushes. "You just don't get it. You cannot control another person's choices, Buffy! You can only do your best to stand by in case they make bad ones and then help them out." 

"Oh, like you helped out Dawn with this one?" Buffy said coldly. "That kind of help is something she doesn't need." 

"Fine," Spike spit out. "Then you can just lock her up in her room like bleeding Rapunzel and pretend to be surprised when you find she's escaped and you don't know where the hell she's run off to." He stomped off the porch. "I'm going home. Tell Little Bit goodnight for me." 

"Whatever." Buffy turned away and slammed the front door behind her as she went in. 

From the window above the front porch, Dawn watched Spike stride angrily into the night, and heard the front door slam and let out the breath she'd been holding as she'd listen to her sister and the vampire argue. Picking up her hairbrush and moving to her vanity, she began to work out the intricate knots in her hair. Taking in her pale, makeup-smeared and still damp reflection, she stared at herself for a long time before abruptly whipping the brush viciously at the mirror, where it clattered harmlessly but noisily. "You're more of a freak than ever," she hissed at herself. 

School on Monday was going to be a bitch.

End Episode Four


End file.
